rttMsy 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND   THE 
SOCIAL   ORDER 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  OKDEE 


BY 

CHAKLES  HOETON  COOLEY 

INSTRUCTOR  IN  SOCIOLOGY  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN 


NEW  YORK 

CHABLES   SCBIBNER'S   SONS 
1902 


COPYRIGHT,  1902,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'3  SONS 


Published,  September,  1902 


TROW  OmeCTOdY 
AND  BOOKBINDING  COM°AHY 
NEW  YORK 


HIA 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

SOCFETY   AND   THE    INDIVIDUAL  pAG]! 

Are  Aspects  of  the  Same  Thing— The  Fallacy  of  Setting  Them 

in  Opposition — Various  Forms  of  this  Fallacy  ...       1 

CHAPTER   II 

SUGGESTION   AND    CHOICE 

The  Meaning  of  these  Terms  and  their  Relation  to  Each  Other 
— Individual  and  Social  Aspects  of  Will  or  Choice — Sug- 
gestion and  Choice  in  Children — The  Scope  of  Suggestion 
Commonly  Underestimated — Practical  Limitations  upon 
Deliberate  Choice — Illustrations  of  the  Action  of  the 
Milieu — The  Greater  or  Less  Activity  of  Choice  Reflects 
the  General  State  of  Society — Suggestibility  .  .  .14 

CHAPTER   III 

SOCIABILITY   AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

The  Sociability  of  Children — Imaginary  Conversation  and  its 
Significance — The  Nature  of  the  Impulse  to  Communicate 
— There  is  no  Separation  between  Real  and  Imaginary  Per- 
sons— Nor  between  Thought  and  Intercourse — The  Study 
and  Interpretation  of  Expression  by  Children — The  Symbol 
or  Sensuous  Nucleus  of  Personal  Ideas — Personal  Physiog- 
nomy in  Art  and  Literature — In  the  Idea  of  Social  Groups 
— Sentiment  in  Personal  Ideas — The  Personal  Idea  is  the 
Immediate  Social  Reality — Society  must  be  Studied  in  the 
Imagination — The  Possible  Reality  of  Incorporeal  Persons 
— The  Material  Notion  of  Personality  Contrasted  with  the 
Notion  Based  on  a  Study  of  Personal  Ideas — Self  and 
Other  in  Personal  Ideas — Personal  Opposition — Further 
Illustration  and  Defence  of  the  View  of  Persons  and  of 
Society  Here  Set  Forth 45 


VI  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IV 

SYMPATHY   OR   COMMCNION   AS    AN    ASPECT    OF    SOCIETY 

PAGE 

The  Meaning  of  Sympathy  as  here  Used — Its  Relation  to 
Thought,  Sentiment,  and  Social  Experience — The  Range 
of  Sympathy  is  a  Measure  of  Personality ;  e.g.,  as  Regards 
Power,  Goodness  or  Badness,  Sanity  or  Insanity — A  Man's 
Sympathies  Reflect  the  Social  Order — Specialization  and 
Breadth — Sympathy  Reflects  Social  Process  in  the  Mingling 
of  Likeness  with  Difference — Also  in  that  it  is  a  Process 
of  Selection  Guided  by  Feeling — The  Meaning  of  Love  in 
Social  Discussion — Love  in  Relation  to  Self — The  Study  of 
Sympathy  Reveals  the  Vital  Unity  of  Human  Life  .  .  102 

CHAPTER  V 

THE    SOCIAL   SELF — 1.    THE   MEANING    OF    "  I  " 

The  "  Empirical  Self  "— "  I "  as  a  State  of  Feeling— Does  Not 
Ordinarily  Refer  to  the  Body — As  a  Sense  of  Power  or  Caus- 
ation— As  a  Sense  of  Speciality  or  Differentiation  in  a  Gen- 
eral Life — The  Reflected  or  Looking-glass  "  I " — "  I  "  is 
Rooted  in  the  Past  and  Varies  with  Social  Conditions — Its 
Relation  to  Habit — To  Disinterested  Love — How  Children 
Learn  the  Meaning  of  "  I " — The  Speculative  or  Metaphys- 
ical u  I "  in  Children — The  Looking-glass  "  I "  in  Children 
— The  Same  in  Adolescence — "I"  in  Relation  to  Sex — 
Simplicity  and  Affectation — Social  Self- feeling  Universal  .  136 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE    SOCIAL    SELF — 2.    VARIOUS    PHASES    OF    "l" 

Egotism  and  Selfishness — The  Use  of  "  I "  in  Literature  and 
Conversation  —Intense  Self-feeling  Necessary  to  Productiv- 
ity— Other  Phases  of  the  Social  Self — Pride  versus  Vanity 
— Self-respect,  Honor,  Self-reverence — Humility — Mala- 
dies of  the  Social  Self— Withdrawal— Self-transformation 
— Phases  of  the  Self  Caused  by  Incongruity  between  the 
Person  and  his  Surroundings .179 


CONTENTS  vil 

CHAPTER  VII 

HOSTILITY 

PAGE 

Simple  or  Animal  Anger — Social  Anger — The  Function  of  Hos- 
tility— The  Doctrine  of  Non-resistance — Control  and  Trans- 
formation of  Hostility  by  Reason — Hostility  as  Pleasure  or 
Pain — The  Importance  of  Accepted  Social  Standards — 
Fear 232 

CHAPTER  VIII 

EMULATION 

Conformity — Non-conformity — The  Two  Viewed  as  Comple- 
mentary Phases  of  Life — Rivalry — Hero-worship  .  .  262 

CHAPTER  IX 

LEADERSHIP    OR    PERSONAL    ASCENDENCY 

Leadership  Defines  and  Organizes  Vague  Tendency — Power  as 
Based  upon  the  Mental  State  of  the  Person  Subject  to  It — 
The  Mental  Traits  of  a  Leader  :  Significance  and  Breadth 
— Why  the  Fame  and  Power  of  a  Man  often  Transcend  his 
Real  Character — Ascendency  of  Belief  and  Hope — Mystery 
— Good  Faith  and  Imposture — Does  the  Leader  really 
Lead?  .  283 

CHAPTER  X 

THE    SOCIAL    ASPECT    OF   CONSCIENCE 

The  Right  as  the  Rational — Significance  of  this  View — The 
Right  as  the  Onward — The  Right  as  Habit — Right  is  not 
the  Social  as  against  the  Individual — It  is,  in  a  Sense,  the 
Social  as  against  the  Sensual— The  Right  as  a  Synthesis 
of  Personal  Influences — Personal  Authority — Confession, 
Prayer,  Publicity — Truth — Dependence  of  Right  upon 
Imagination — Conscience  Reflects  a  Social  Group — Ideal 
Persons  as  Factors  in  Conscience  .  .  32G 


via  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XI 

PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

PAGE 

Is  a  Phase  of  the  Question  of  Right  and  Wrong — Relation  to 
the  Idea  of  Development — Justification  and  Meaning  of 
the  Phrase  "  Personal  Degeneracy  " — Hereditary  and  So- 
cial Factors  in  Personal  Degeneracy — Degeneracy  as  a 
Mental  Trait — Conscience  in  Degeneracy — Crime,  Insan- 
ity, and  Responsibility — General  Aims  in  the  Treatment  of 
Degeneracy  . 372 

CHAPTER  XII 

FREEDOM 

The  Meaning  of  Freedom  —Freedom  and  Discipline — Freedom 
as  a  Phase  of  the  Social  Order — Freedom  Involves  Inci 
dental  Strain  and  Degeneracy 392 

INDEX  .  405 


HUMAN   NATURE   AND   THE 
SOCIAL   ORDER 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  ORDER 

CHAPTER  I 
SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

ARE  ASPECTS   OF  THE   SAME   THING — THE  FALLACY   OF   SETTING 
THEM  IN  OPPOSITION — VARIOUS  FORMS  OF  THIS  FALLACY. 

"  SOCIETY  and  the  Individual "  is  really  the  subject 
of  this  whole  book,  and  not  merely  of  Chapter  One. 
It  is  my  general  aim  to  set  forth,  from  various  points 
of  view,  what  the  individual  is,  considered  as  a  mem- 
ber of  a  social  whole ;  while  the  special  purpose  of 
this  chapter  is  only  to  offer  a  preliminary  statement 
of  the  matter,  as  I  conceive  it,  afterward  to  be  un- 
folded at  some  length  and  variously  illustrated. 

A  separate  individual  is  an  abstraction  unknown 
to  experience,  and  so  likewise  is  society  when  re- 
garded as  something  apart  from  individuals.  The 
real  thing  is  Human  Life,  which  may  be  considered 
either  in  an  individual  aspect  or  in  a  social,  that  is 
to  say  a  general,  aspect ;  but  is  always,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  both  individual  and  general.  In  other  words, 
"  society  "  and  "  individuals "  do  not  denote  sepa- 

1 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

rable  phenomena,  but  are  simply  collective  and  dis- 
tributive aspects  of  the  same  thing ,  the  relation  be- 
tween them  being  like  that  between  other  expressions 
one  of  which  denotes  a  group  as  a  whole  and  the 
other  the  members  of  the  group,  such  as  the  army 
and  the  soldiers,  the  class  and  the  students,  and  so 
on.  This  holds  true  of  any  social  aggregate,  great 
or  small ;  of  a  family,  a  city,  a  nation,  a  race ;  of 
mankind  as  a  whole  :  no  matter  how  extensive,  com- 
plex, or  enduring  a  group  may  be,  no  good  reason  can 
be  given  for  regarding  it  as  essentially  different  in 
this  respect  from  the  smallest,  simplest,  or  most 
transient. 

So  far,  then,  as  there  is  any  difference  between  the 
two,  it  is  rather  in  our  point  of  view  than  in  the  ob- 
ject we  are  looking  at :  when  we  speak  of  society,  or 
use  any  other  collective  term,  we  fix  our  minds  upon 
some  general  view  of  the  people  concerned,  while 
when  we  speak  of  individuals  we  disregard  the  gen- 
eral aspect  and  think  of  them  as  if  they  were  separate. 
Thus  "  the  Cabinet "  may  consist  of  President  Lin- 
coln, Secretary  Stanton,  Secretary  Seward,  and  so 
on ;  but  when  I  say  "  the  Cabinet "  I  do  not  suggest 
the  same  idea  as  when  I  enumerate  these  gentlemen 
separately.  Society,  or  any  complex  group,  may,  to 
ordinary  observation,  be  a  very  different  thing  from 
all  of  its  members  viewed  one  by  one — as  a  man  who 
beheld  General  Grant's  army  from  Missionary  Kidge 
would  have  seen  something  other  than  he  would  by 
approaching  every  soldier  in  it.  In  the  same  way 

2 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

a  picture  is  made  up  of  so  many  square  inches  of 
painted  canvas ;  but  if  you  should  look  at  these  one 
at  a  time,  covering  the  others,  until  you  had  seen 
them  all,  you  would  still  not  have  seen  the  pict- 
ure. There  may,  in  all  such  cases,  be  a  system  or 
organization  in  the  whole  that  is  not  apparent  in  the 
parts.  In  this  sense,  and  in  no  other,  is  there  a  dif- 
ference between  society  and  the  individuals  of  which 
it  is  composed ;  a  difference  not  residing  in  the  facts 
themselves  but  existing  to  the  observer  on  account  of 
the  limits  of  his  perception.  A  complete  view  of  so- 
ciety would  also  be  a  complete  view  of  all  the  indi- 
viduals, and  vice  versa  ;  there  would  be  no  difference 
between  them. 

And  just  as  there  is  no  society  or  group  that  is  not 
a  collective  view  of  persons,  so  there  is  no  individ- 
ual who  may  not  be  regarded  as  a  particular  view 
of  social  groups.  He  has  no  separate  existence ; 
through  both  the  hereditary  and  the  social  factors  in 
his  life  a  man  is  bound  into  the  whole  of  which  he 
is  a  member,  and  to  consider  him  apart  from  it  is 
quite  as  artificial  as  to  consider  society  apart  from 
individuals. 

If  this  is  true  there  is,  of  course,  a  fallacy  in  that 
not  uncommon  manner  of  speaking  which  sets  the 
social  and  the  individual  over  against  each  other  as 
separate  and  antagonistic.  The  word  "  social  "  ap- 
pears to  be  used  in  at  least  three  fairly  distinct 
senses,  but  in  none  of  these  does  it  mean  something 

3 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  can  properly  be  regarded  as  opposite  to  individ- 
ual or  personal. 

In  its  largest  sense  it  denotes  that  which  pertains 
to  the  collective  aspect  of  humanity,  to  society  in  its 
widest  and  vaguest  meaning.  In  this  sense  the  in- 
dividual and  all  his  attributes  are  social,  since  they 
are  all  connected  with  the  general  life  in  one  way  or 
another,  and  are  part  of  a  collective  development. 

Again,  social  may  mean  what  pertains  to  immedi- 
ate intercourse,  to  the  life  of  conversation  and  face- 
to-face  sympathy — sociable  in  short.  This  is  some- 
thing quite  different,  but  no  more  antithetical  to 
individual  than  the  other ;  it  is  in  these  relations  that 
individuality  most  obviously  exists  and  expresses 
itself. 

In  a  third  sense  the  word  means  conducive  to  the 
collective  welfare,  and  thus  becomes  nearly  equivalent 
to  moral,  as  when  we  say  that  crime  or  sensuality  is 
unsocial  or  anti-social ;  but  here  again  it  cannot  prop- 
erly be  made  the  antithesis  of  individual — since  wrong 
is  surely  no  more  individual  than  right — but  must  be 
contrasted  with  immoral,  brutal,  selfish,  or  some 
other  word  with  an  ethical  implication. 

There  are  a  number  of  expressions  which  are  close- 
ly associated  in  common  usage  with  this  objection- 
able antithesis ;  such  words,  for  instance,  as  indi- 
vidualism, socialism,  particularism,  collectivism.* 
These  appear  to  be  used  with  a  good  deal  of  vague- 

*  Also  free-will,  determinism,  egoism,  and  altruism,  which  in- 
volve, in  my  opinion,  a  kindred  misconception. 

4 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

ness,  so  that  it  is  always  in  order  to  require  that  any- 
one who  employs  them  shall  make  it  plain  in  what 
sense  they  are  to  be  taken.  I  wish  to  make  no  cap- 
tious objections  to  particular  forms  of  expression,  and 
so  far  as  these  can  be  shown  to  have  meanings  that 
express  the  facts  of  life  I  have  nothing  to  say  against 
them.  Of  the  current  use  of  individualism  and  so- 
cialism in  antithesis  to  each  other,  about  the  same 
may  be  said  as  of  the  words  without  the  ism.  I  do 
not  see  that  life  presents  two  distinct  and  opposing 
tendencies  that  can  properly  be  called  individualism 
and  socialism,  any  more  than  that  there  are  two  dis- 
tinct and  opposing  entities,  society  and  the  individual, 
to  embody  these  tendencies.  The  phenomena  usually 
called  individualistic  are  always  socialistic  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  expressive  of  tendencies  growing 
out  of  the  general  life,  and,  contrariwise,  the  so-called 
socialistic  phenomena  have  always  an  obvious  indi- 
vidual aspect.  These  and  similar  terms  may  be  used, 
conveniently  enough,  to  describe  theories  or  pro- 
grammes of  the  day,  but  whether  they  are  suitable  for 
purposes  of  careful  study  appears  somewhat  doubtful. 
If  used,  they  ought,  it  seems  to  me,  to  receive  more 
adequate  definition  than  they  have  at  present. 

For  example,  all  the  principal  epochs  of  European 
history  might  be,  and  most  of  them  are,  spoken  of  as 
individualistic  on  one  ground  or  another,  and  without 
departing  from  current  usage  of  the  word.  The  de- 
caying Roman  Empire  was  individualistic  if  a  decline 
of  public  spirit  and  an  every-man-for-himself  feeling 

5 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

and  practice  constitute  individualism.  So  also  was 
the  following  period  of  political  confusion.  The 
feudal  system  is  often  regarded  as  individualistic,  be- 
cause of  the  relative  independence  and  isolation  of 
small  political  units — quite  a  different  use  of  the 
word  from  the  preceding — and  after  this  come  the 
Revival  of  Learning,  the  Renaissance,  and  the  Refor- 
mation, which  are  all  commonly  spoken  of,  on  still 
other  grounds,  as  assertions  of  individualism.  Then 
we  reach  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, 
sceptical,  transitional,  and,  again,  individualistic; 
and  so  to  our  own  time,  which  many  hold  to  be  the 
most  individualistic  of  all.  One  feels  like  asking 
whether  a  word  which  means  so  many  things  as  this 
means  anything  whatever. 

There  is  always  some  confusion  of  terms  in  speak- 
ing of  opposition  between  an  individual  and  society 
in  general,  even  when  the  writer's  meaning  is  obvious 
enough :  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  either  that 
one  individual  is  opposing  many,  or  that  one  part  of 
society  is  opposing  other  parts ;  and  thus  avoid  con- 
fusing the  two  aspects  of  life  in  the  same  expression. 
When  Emerson  says  that  society  is  in  a  conspiracy 
against  the  independence  of  each  of  its  members,  we 
are  to  understand  that  any  peculiar  tendency  repre- 
sented by  one  person  finds  itself  more  or  less  at  vari- 
ance with  the  general  current  of  tendencies  organized 
in  other  persons.  It  is  no  more  individual,  nor  any 
less  social,  in  a  large  sense,  than  other  tendencies 
represented  by  more  persons.  A  thousand  persons 

6 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

are  just  as  truly  individuals  as  one,  and  the  HI  an  who 
seems  to  stand  alone  draws  his  being  from  the  general 
stream  of  life  just  as  truly  and  inevitably  as  if  he 
were  one  of  a  thousand.  Innovation  is  just  as  social 
as  conformity,  genius  as  mediocrity.  These  distinc- 
tions are  not  between  what  is  individual  and  what  is 
social,  but  between  what  is  usual  or  established  and 
what  is  exceptional  or  novel.  In  other  words,  wher- 
ever you  find  life  as  society  there  you  will  find  life  as 
individuality,  and  vice  versa. 

I  think,  then,  that  the  antithesis,  society  versus  the 
individual,  is  false  and  hollow  whenever  used  as  a 
general  or  philosophical  statement  of  human  rela- 
tions. Whatever  idea  may  be  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  set  these  words  and  their  derivatives  over  against 
each  other,  the  notion  conveyed  is  that  of  two  sepa- 
rable entities  or  forces  ;  and  certainly  such  a  notion 
is  untrue  to  fact. 

Most  people  not  only  think  of  individuals  and  so- 
ciety as  more  or  less  separate  and  antithetical,  but 
they  look  upon  the  former  as  antecedent  to  the  lat- 
ter. That  persons  make  society  would  be  generally 
admitted  as  a  matter  of  course ;  but  that  society 
makes  persons  would  strike  many  as  a  startling  no- 
tion, though  I  know  of  no  good  reason  for  looking 
upon  the  distributive  aspect  of  life  as  more  primary 
or  causative  than  the  collective  aspect.  The  reason 
for  the  common  impression  appears  to  be  that  we 
think  most  naturally  and  easily  of  the  individual 
phase  of  life,  simply  because  it  is  a  tangible  one,  the 

7 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

phase  under  which  men  appear  to  the  senses,  while 
the  actuality  of  groups,  of  nations,  of  mankind  at 
large,  is  realized  only  by  the  active  and  instructed 
imagination.  We  ordinarily  regard  society,  so  far  as 
we  conceive  it  at  all,  in  a  vaguely  material  aspect,  as 
an  aggregate  of  physical  bodies,  not  as  the  vital  whole 
which  it  is  ;  and  so,  of  course,  we  do  not  see  that  it 
may  be  as  original  or  causative  as  anything  else. 
Indeed  many  look  upon  "society"  and  other  general 
terms  as  somewhat  mystical,  and  are  inclined  to 
doubt  whether  there  is  any  reality  back  of  them. 

This  nai've  individualism  of  thought — which,  how- 
ever, does  not  truly  see  the  individual  any  more  than 
it  does  society — is  reinforced  by  traditions  in  which 
all  of  us  are  brought  up,  and  is  so  hard  to  shake  off 
that  it  may  be  worth  while  to  point  out  a  little  more 
definitely  some  of  the  prevalent  ways  of  conceiving 
life  which  are  permeated  by  it,  and  which  anyone 
who  agrees  with  what  has  just  been  said  may  regard 
as  fallacious.  My  purpose  in  doing  this  is  only  to 
make  clearer  the  standpoint  from  which  succeeding 
chapters  are  written,  and  I  do  not  propose  any 
thorough  discussion  of  the  views  mentioned. 

First,  then,  we  have  mere  individualism.  In  this 
the  distributive  aspect  is  almost  exclusively  re- 
garded, collective  phases  being  looked  upon  as  quite 
secondary  and  incidental.  Each  person  is  held  to 
be  a  separate  agent,  and  all  social  phenomena  are 
thought  of  as  originating  in  the  action  of  such  agents. 
The  individual  is  the  source,  the  independent,  the 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

only  human  source,  of  events.  Although  this  way  of 
looking  at  things  has  been  much  discredited  by  the 
evolutionary  science  and  philosophy  of  recent  years, 
it  is  by  no  means  abandoned,  even  in  theory,  and 
practically  it  enters  as  a  premise,  in  one  shape  or 
another,  into  most  of  the  current  thought  of  the  day. 
It  springs  naturally  from  the  established  way  of 
thinking,  congenial,  as  I  have  remarked,  to  the  ordi- 
nary material  view  of  things  and  corroborated  by 
theological  and  other  traditions. 

Next  is  double  causation,  or  a  partition  of  power 
between  society  and  the  individual,  thought  of  as 
separate  causes.  This  notion,  in  one  shape  or  an- 
other, is  the  one  ordinarily  met  with  in  social  and 
ethical  discussion.  It  is  no  advance,  philosophi- 
cally, upon  the  preceding.  There  is  the  same  prem- 
ise of  the  individual  as  a  separate,  unrelated  agent ; 
but  over  against  him  is  set  a  vaguely  conceived  gen- 
eral or  collective  interest  and  force.  It  seems  that 
people  are  so  accustomed  to  thinking  of  themselves 
as  uncaused  causes,  special  creators  on  a  small  scale, 
that  when  the  existence  of  general  phenomena  is  forced 
upon  their  notice  they  are  likely  to  regard  these  as 
something  additional,  separate,  and  more  or  less  an- 
tithetical. Our  two  forces  contend  with  varying  fort- 
unes, the  thinker  sometimes  sympathizing  with  one, 
sometimes  with  the  other,  and  being  an  individualist 
or  a  socialist  accordingly.  The  doctrines  usually  un- 
derstood in  connection  with  these  terms  differ,  as  re- 
gards their  conception  of  the  nature  of  life,  only  in 

9 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

taking  opposite  sides  of  the  same  questionable  an- 
tithesis. The  socialist  holds  it  desirable  that  the 
general  or  collective  force  should  win ;  the  individ- 
ualist has  a  contrary  opinion.  Neither  offers  any 
change  of  ground,  any  reconciling  and  renewing 
breadth  of  view.  So  far  as  breadth  of  view  is  con- 
cerned a  man  might  quite  as  well  be  an  individualist 
as  a  socialist  or  collectivist,  the  two  being  identical 
in  philosophy  though  antagonistic  in  programme.  If 
one  is  inclined  to  neither  party  he  may  take  refuge  in 
the  expectation  that  the  controversy,  resting,  as  he 
may  hold  that  it  does,  on  a  false  conception  of  life, 
will  presently  take  its  proper  place  among  the  for- 
gotten debris  of  speculation. 

Thirdly  we  have  primitive  individualism.  This 
expression  has  been  used  to  describe  the  view  that 
sociality  follows  individuality  in  time,  is  a  later  and 
additional  product  of  development.  This  view  is  a 
variety  of  the  preceding,  and  is,  perhaps,  formed  by 
a  mingling  of  individualistic  preconceptions  with 
a  somewhat  crude  evolutionary  philosophy.  Indi- 
viduality is  usually  conceived  as  lower  in  moral  rank 
as  well  as  precedent  in  time.  Man  ivas  a  mere  indi- 
vidual, mankind  a  mere  aggregation  of  such,  but  he 
has  gradually  become  socialized,  he  is  progressively 
merging  into  a  social  whole.  Morally  speaking,  the 
individual  is  the  bad,  the  social  the  good,  and  we 
must  push  on  the  work  of  putting  down  the  former 
and  bringing  in  the  latter. 

Of  course  the  view  which  I  regard  as  sound,  is  that 
10 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

individuality  is  neither  prior  in  time  nor  lower  in 
moral  rank  than  sociality ;  but  that  the  two  have  al- 
ways existed  side  by  side  as  complementary  aspects  of 
the  same  thing,  and  that  the  line  of  progress  is  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher  type  of  both,  not  from  the  one  to  the 
other.  If  the  word  social  is  applied  only  to  the  higher 
forms  of  mental  life  it  should,  as  already  suggested,  be 
opposed  not  to  individual,  but  to  animal,  sensual,  or 
some  other  word  implying  mental  or  moral  inferior- 
ity. If  we  go  back  to  a  time  when  the  state  of  our 
remote  ancestors  was  such  that  we  are  not  willing  to 
call  it  social,  then  it  must  have  been  equally  unde- 
serving to  be  described  as  individual  or  personal ; 
that  is  to  say,  they  must  have  been  just  as  inferior  to 
us  when  viewed  separately  as  when  viewed  collec- 
tively. To  question  this  is  to  question  the  vital 
unity  of  human  life. 

The  life  of  the  human  species,  like  that  of  other 
species,  must  always  have  been  both  general  and  par- 
ticular, must  always  have  had  its  collective  and  dis- 
tributive aspects.  The  plane  of  this  life  has  grad- 
ually risen,  involving,  of  course,  both  the  aspects 
mentioned.  Now,  as  ever,  they  develop  as  one,  and 
may  be  observed  united  in  the  highest  activities  of 
the  highest  minds.  Shakespeare,  for  instance,  is  in 
one  point  of  view  a  unique  and  transcendent  individ- 
ual; in  another  he  is  a  splendid  expression  of  the 
general  life  of  mankind :  the  difference  is  not  in  him 
but  in  the  way  we  choose  to  look  at  him. 

Finally,  there  is  the  social  faculty  view.  This  ex- 
11 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

pression  might  be  used  to  indicate  those  conceptions 
which  regard  the  social  as  including  only  a  part, 
often  a  rather  definite  part,  of  the  individual.  Hu- 
man nature  is  thus  divided  into  individualistic  or 
non-social  tendencies  or  faculties,  and  those  that  are 
social.  Thus,  certain  emotions,  as  love,  are  social; 
others,  as  fear  or  anger,  are  unsocial  or  individualis- 
tic. Some  writers  have  even  treated  the  intelligence 
as  an  individualistic  faculty,  and  have  found  sociality 
only  in  some  sorts  of  emotion  or  sentiment. 

This  idea  of  instincts  or  faculties  that  are  pecul- 
iarly social  is  well  enough  if  we  use  this  word  in  the 
sense  of  pertaining  to  conversation  or  immediate  fel- 
low-feeling. Affection  is  certainly  more  social  in 
this  sense  than  fear.  But  if  it  is  meant  that  these 
instincts  or  faculties  are  in  themselves  morally  higher 
than  others,  or  that  they  alone  pertain  to  the  collec- 
tive life,  the  view  is,  I  think,  very  questionable.  At 
any  rate  the  opinion  I  hold,  and  expect  to  explain 
more  fully  in  the  further  course  of  this  book,  is  that 
man's  psychical  outfit  is  not  divisible  into  the  social 
and  the  non-social ;  but  that  he  is  all  social  in  a 
large  sense,  is  all  a  part  of  the  common  human  life, 
and  that  his  social  or  moral  progress  consists  less  in 
the  aggrandizement  of  particular  faculties  or  instincts 
and  the  suppression  of  others,  than  in  the  discipline 
of  all  with  reference  to  a  progressive  organization 
of  life  which  we  know  in  thought  as  conscience. 

Some  instincts  or  tendencies  may  grow  in  relative 
importance,  may  have  an  increasing  function,  while 

12 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

the  opposite  may  be  true  of  others.  Such  relative 
growth  aud  diminution  of  parts  seems  to  be  a  general 
feature  of  evolution,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  it 
should  be  absent  from  our  mental  development.  But 
here  as  well  as  elsewhere  most  parts,  if  not  all,  are 
or  have  been  functional  with  reference  to  a  life  col- 
lective as  well  as  distributive;  there  is  no  sharp 
separation  of  faculties,  and  progress  takes  place 
rather  by  gradual  adaptation  of  old  organs  to  new 
functions  than  by  disuse  and  decay. 


13 


CHAPTER  H 

SUGGESTION   AND  CHOICE 

THE  MEANING  OF  THESE  TERMS  AND  THKIK  RELATION  TO  EACH 
OTHER — INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  A  SPECTS  OF  WILL  OR  CHOICB 
— SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE  IN  CHILDREN — THE  SCOPE  OF 
SUGGESTION  COMMONLY  UNDERESTIMATED — PRACTICAL  LIMITA- 
TIONS UPON  DELIBERATE  CHOICE — ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  THE  AC- 
TION OF  THE  MILIEU — THE  GREATER  OR  LESS  ACTIVITY  OF 
CHOICE  REFLECTS  THE  STATE  OF  SOCIETY — SUGGESTIBILITY. 

THE  antithesis  between  suggestion  and  choice  is 
another  of  those  familiar  ideas  which  are  not  always 
so  clear  as  they  should  be. 

The  word  suggestion  is  used  here  to  denote  an  in- 
fluence that  works  in  a  comparatively  mechanical  or 
reflex  way,  without  calling  out  that  higher  selective 
activity  of  the  mind  implied  in  choice  or  will.  Thus 
the  hypnotic  subject  who  performs  apparently  mean- 
ingless actions  at  the  word  of  the  operator  is  said 
to  be  controlled  by  suggestion  ;  so  also  is  one  who 
catches  up  tricks  of  speech  and  action  from  other 
people  without  meaning  to.  From  such  instances 
the  idea  is  extended  to  embrace  any  thought  or  ac- 
tion which  is  mentally  simple  and  seems  not  to  in- 
volve choice.  The  behavior  of  people  under  strong 
emotion  is  suggestive  ;  crowds  are  suggestible  ;  habit 
is  a  kind  of  suggestion,  and  so  on. 

I  prefer  this  word  to  imitation,  which  some  use  in 
14 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

this  or  a  similar  sense,  because  the  latter,  as  ordinar- 
ily understood,  seems  to  cover  too  little  in  some  di- 
rections and  too  much  in  others.  In  common  use  it 
means  an  action  that  results  in  visible  or  audible  re- 
semblance. Now  although  our  simple  reactions  to 
the  influence  of  others  are  largely  of  this  sort,  they 
are  by  no  means  altogether  so;  the  actions  of  a  child 
during  the  first  six  months  of  life,  for  instance,  are 
very  little  imitative  in  this  sense ;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  imitation  that  produces  a  visible  resemblance 
may  be  a  voluntary  process  of  the  most  complex  sort 
imaginable,  like  the  skilful  painting  of  a  portrait. 
However,  it  makes  little  difference  what  words  we 
use  if  we  have  sound  meanings  back  of  them,  and  I 
am  far  from  intending  to  find  fault  with  writers,  like 
Professor  Baldwin  and  M.  Tarde,  who  adopt  the 
word  and  give  it  a  wide  and  unusual  application. 
For  my  purpose,  however,  it  does  not  seem  expe- 
dient to  depart  so  far  from  ordinary  usage. 

The  distinction  between  suggestion  and  choice  is 
not,  I  think,  a  sharp  opposition  between  separ- 
able or  radically  different  things,  but  rather  a  way 
of  indicating  the  lower  and  higher  stages  of  a 
series.  What  we  call  choice  or  will  appears  to  be  an 
ill-defined  area  of  more  strenuous  mental  activity 
within  a  much  wider  field  of  activity  similar  in  kind 
but  less  intense.  It  is  not  sharply  divisible  from  the 
mass  of  involuntary  thought.  The  truth  is  that  the 
facts  of  the  mind,  of  society,  indeed  of  any  living 
whole,  seldom  admit  of  sharp  division,  but  show 

15 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

gradual  transitions  from  one  thing  to  another :  there 
are  no  fences  in  these  regions.  We  speak  of  sugges- 
tion as  mechanical;  but  it  seems  probable  that  all 
psychical  life  is  selective,  or,  in  some  sense,  choos- 
ing, and  that  the  rudiments  of  consciousness  and  will 
may  be  discerned  or  inferred  in  the  simplest  reaction 
of  the  lowest  living  creature.  In  our  own  minds  the 
comparatively  simple  ideas  which  are  called  sugges- 
tions are  by  no  means  single  and  primary,  but  each 
one  is  itself  a  living,  shifting,  multifarious  bit  of  life, 
a  portion  of  the  fluid  "  stream  of  thought "  formed 
by  some  sort  of  selection  and  synthesis  out  of  sim- 
pler elements.  On  the  other  hand,  our  most  elabo- 
rate and  volitional  thought  and  action  is  suggested 
in  the  sense  that  it  consists  not  in  creation  out  of 
nothing,  but  in  a  creative  synthesis  or  reorganization 
of  old  material. 

The  distinction,  then,  is  one  of  degree  rather  than 
of  kind ;  and  choice,  as  contrasted  with  suggestion, 
is,  in  its  individual  aspect,  a  comparatively  elaborate 
process  of  mental  organization  or  synthesis,  of  which 
we  are  reflectively  aware,  and  which  is  rendered 
necessary  by  complexity  in  the  elements  of  our 
thought.  In  its  social  aspect — for  all,  or  nearly  all, 
our  choices  relate  in  one  way  or  another  to  the  social 
environment — it  is  an  organization  of  comparatively 
complex  social  relations.  Precisely  as  the  conditions 
about  us  and  the  ideas  suggested  by  those  conditions 
become  intricate,  are  we  forced  to  think,  to  choose,  to 
define  the  useful  and  the  right,  and,  in  general,  to 

16 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

work  out  the  higher  intellectual  life.  When  life  is 
simple,  thought  and  action  are  comparatively  me- 
chanical or  suggestive ;  the  higher  consciousness  is 
not  aroused,  the  reflective  will  has  little  or  nothing 
to  do ;  the  captain  stays  below  and  the  inferior  of- 
ficers work  the  ship.  But  when  life  is  diverse, 
thought  is  so  likewise,  and  the  mind  must  achieve 
the  higher  synthesis,  or  suffer  that  sense  of  division 
which  is  its  peculiar  pain.  In  short,  the  question  of 
suggestion  and  choice  is  only  another  view  of  the 
question  of  uniformity  and  complexity  in  social  rela- 
tions. 

Will,  or  choice,  like  all  phases  of  mental  life,  may 
be  looked  at  either  in  a  particular  or  a  general  as- 
pect; and  we  have,  accordingly,  individual  will  or 
social  will,  depending  upon  our  point  of  view,  as  to 
whether  we  regard  the  activity  singly  or  in  a  mass. 
But  there  is  no  real  separation ;  they  are  only  differ- 
ent phases  of  the  same  thing.  Any  choice  that  I  can 
make  is  a  synthesis  of  suggestions  derived  in  one 
way  or  another  from  the  general  life  ;  and  it  also  re- 
acts upon  that  life,  so  that  my  will  is  social  as  being 
both  effect  and  cause  with  reference  to  it.  If  I  buy  a 
straw  hat  you  may  look  at  my  action  separately,  as 
my  individual  choice,  or  as  part  of  a  social  demand 
for  straw  hats,  or  as  indicating  non-conformity  to  a 
fashion  of  wearing  some  other  sort  of  hats,  and  so 
on.  There  is  no  mystery  about  the  matter ;  nothing 
that  need  puzzle  anyone  who  is  capable  of  perceiving 
that  a  thing  may  look  differently  from  different  stand- 

17 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

points,  like  the  post  that  was  painted  a  different 
color  on  each  of  its  four  sides. 

It  is,  I  think,  a  mistake  of  superficial  readers  to 
imagine  that  psychologists  or  sociologists  are  trying 
to  depreciate  the  will,  or  that  there  is  any  tendency 
to  such  depreciation  in  a  sound  evolutionary  science 
or  philosophy.  The  trouble  with  the  popular  view 
of  will,  derived  chiefly  from  tradition,  is  not  that  it 
exaggerates  its  importance,  which  would  perhaps  be 
impossible ;  but,  first,  that  it  thinks  of  will  only  in 
the  individual  aspect,  and  does  not  grasp  the  fact — 
plain  enough  it  would  seem — that  the  act  of  choice  is 
cause  and  effect  in  a  general  life ;  and,  second,  that 
it  commonly  overlooks  the  importance  of  involuntary 
forces,  or  at  least  makes  them  separate  from  and  an- 
tithetical to  choice — as  if  the  captain  were  expected 
to  work  the  ship  all  alone,  or  in  opposition  to  the 
crew,  instead  of  using  them  as  subordinate  agents. 
There  is  little  use  in  arguing  abstractly  points  like 
these  ;  but  if  the  reader  who  may  be  puzzled  by  them 
will  try  to  free  himself  from  metaphysical  formulae, 
and  determine  to  see  the  facts  as  they  are,  he  will  be 
in  a  way  to  get  some  healthy  understanding  of  the 
matter.* 

*  It  should  easily  be  understood  that  one  who  agrees  with  what 
was  said  in  the  preceding  chapter  about  the  relation  between  society 
and  the  individual,  can  hardly  entertain  the  question  whether  the 
individual  will  is  free  or  externally  determined.  This  question  as- 
sumes as  true  what  he  holds  to  be  false,  namely  that  the  particular 
aspect  of  mankind  is  separable  from  the  collective  aspect.  The 
idea  underlying  it  is  that  of  an  isolated  fragment  of  life,  the  will, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  some  great  mass  of  life,  the  environment,  on 

18 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

By  way  of  illustrating  these  general  statements  I 
shall  first  offer  a  few  remarks  concerning  suggestion 

the  other ;  the  question  being  which  of  these  two  antithetical  forces 
shall  be  master.  If  one,  then  the  will  is  free;  if  the  other,  then 
it  is  determined.  It  is  as  if  each  man's  mind  were  a  castle  be- 
sieged by  an  army,  and  the  question  were  whether  the  army  should 
make  a  breach  and  capture  the  occupants.  It  is  hard  to  see  how 
this  way  of  conceiving  the  matter  could  arise  from  a  direct  obser- 
vation of  actual  social  relations.  Take,  for  instance,  the  case  of  a 
member  of  Congress,  or  of  any  other  group  of  reasoning,  feeling, 
and  mutually  influencing  creatures.  Is  he  free  in  relation  to  the 
rest  of  the  body  or  do  they  control  him  ?  The  question  appears 
senseless.  He  is  influenced  by  them  and  also  exerts  an  influence 
upon  them.  While  he  is  certainly  not  apart  from  their  power,  he 
is  controlled,  if  we  use  that  word,  through  his  own  will  and  not  in 
spite  of  it.  And  it  seems  plain  enough  that  a  relation  similar  in 
kind  holds  between  the  individual  and  the  nation,  or  between  the 
individual  and  humanity  in  general.  If  you  think  of  human  life  as 
a  whole  and  of  each  individual  as  a  member  and  not  a  fragment, 
as,  in  my  opinion,  you  must  if  you  base  your  thoughts  on  a  direct 
study  of  society  and  not  upon  metaphysical  or  theological  precon- 
ceptions, the  question  whether  the  will  is  free  or  not  is  seen  to  be 
meaningless.  The  individual  will  appears  to  be  a  specialized  part 
of  the  general  life,  more  or  less  divergent  from  other  parts  and 
possibly  contending  with  them  ;  but  this  very  divergence  is  a  part 
of  its  function — just  as  a  member  of  Congress  serves  that  body  by 
urging  his  particular  opinions — and  in  a  large  view  does  not  sep- 
arate but  unites  it  to  life  as  a  whole.  It  is  often  necessary  to  con- 
sider the  individual  with  reference  to  his  opposition  to  other 
persons,  or  to  prevailing  tendencies,  and  in  so  doing  it  may  be 
convenient  to  speak  of  him  as  separate  from  and  antithetical  to  the 
life  about  him  :  but  this  separateness  and  opposition  are  incidental, 
like  the  right  hand  pulling  against  the  left  to  break  a  string,  and 
there  seems  to  be  no  sufficient  warrant  for  extending  it  into  a  gen- 
eral or  philosophical  proposition. 

There  may  be  some  sense  in  which  the  question  of  the  freedom 
of  the  will  is  still  of  interest ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  student 
of  social  relations  may  well  pass  it  by  as  one  of  those  scholastic 
controversies  which  are  settled,  if  at  all,  not  by  being  decided  one 
way  or  the  other,  but  by  becoming  obsolete. 

19 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  choice  in  the  life  of  children,  and  then  go  on  to 
discuss  their  working  in  adult  life  and  upon  the 
career  as  a  whole. 

There  appears  to  be  quite  a  general  impression 
that  children  are  far  more  subject  to  control  through 
suggestion  or  mechanical  imitation  than  grown-up 
people  are ;  in  other  words,  that  their  volition  is  less 
active.  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  this  is  the  case  : 
their  choices  are,  as  a  rule,  less  stable  and  consistent 
than  ours,  their  minds  have  less  definiteness  of  or- 
ganization, so  that  their  actions  appear  less  rational 
and  more  externally  determined;  but  on  the  other 
hand  they  have  less  of  the  mechanical  subjection  to 
habit  that  goes  with  a  settled  character.  Choice  is  a 
process  of  growth,  of  progressive  mental  organization 
through  selection  and  assimilation  of  the  materials 
which  life  presents,  and  this  process  is  surely  never 
more  vigorous  than  in  childhood  and  youth.  It  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  the  choosing  and  formative 
vigor  of  the  mind  is  greater  under  the  age  of  twenty- 
five  than  after :  the  will  of  middle  age  is  stronger  in 
the  sense  that  it  has  more  momentum,  but  it  has  less 
acceleration,  runs  more  on  habit,  and  so  is  less  ca- 
pable of  fresh  choice. 

I  am  distrustful  of  that  plausible  but  possibly  illu- 
sive analogy  between  the  mind  of  the  child  and  the 
mind  of  primitive  man,  which,  in  this  connection, 
would  suggest  a  like  simplicity  and  inertness  of 
thought  in  the  two.  Our  children  achieve  in  a  dozen 

20 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

years  a  mental  development  much  above  that  of 
savages,  and  supposing  that  they  do,  in  some  sense, 
recapitulate  the  progress  of  the  race,  they  certainly 
cover  the  ground  at  a  very  different  rate  of  speed, 


which  involves  a  corresponding  intensity  of  mental 
life.  After  the  first  year  certainly,  if  not  from  birth, 
they  share  our  social  order,  and  we  induct  them  so 
rapidly  into  its  complex  life  that  their  minds  have 
perhaps  as  much  novelty  and  diversity  to  synthetize 
as  ours  do. 

Certainly  one  who  begins  to  observe  children  with 
a  vague  notion  that  their  actions,  after  the  first  few 
months,  are  almost  all  mechanically  imitative,  is 
likely  to  be  surprised.  I  had  this  notion,  derived, 
perhaps  without  much  warrant,  from  a  slight  ac- 
quaintance with  writings  on  child-study  current  pre- 
vious to  1893,  when  my  first  child  was  born.  He 
was  a  boy — I  will  call  him  B. — in  whom  imitativeness, 
as  ordinarily  understood,  happened  to  be  unusually 
late  in  its  development.  Until  he  was  more  than  two 
years  and  a  half  old  all  that  I  noticed  that  was  ob- 
viously imitative,  in  the  sense  of  a  visible  or  audible 
repetition  of  the  acts  of  others,  was  the  utterance  of 
about  six  words  that  he  learned  to  say  during  his 
second  year.  It  is  likely  that  very  close  observation, 
assisted  by  the  clearer  notion  of  what  to  look  for  that 
comes  by  experience,  would  have  discovered  more : 
but  no  more  was  obvious  to  ordinary  expectant  at- 
tention. The  obvious  thing  was  his  constant  use  of 
experiment  and  reflection,  and  the  slow  and  often 

21 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND   THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

curious  results  that  he  attained  in  this  manner.  At 
two  and  a  half  he  had  learned,  for  instance,  to  use  a 
fork  quite  skilfully.  The  wish  to  use  it  was  perhaps 
an  imitative  impulse,  in  a  sense,  but  his  methods 
were  original  and  the  outcome  of  a  long  course  of  in- 
dependent and  reflective  experiment.  His  skill  was 
the  continuation  of  a  dexterity  previously  acquired  in 
playing  with  long  pins,  which  he  ran  into  cushions, 
the  interstices  of  his  carriage,  etc.  The  fork  was 
apparently  conceived  as  an  interesting  variation  upon 
the  hat-pin,  and  not,  primarily,  as  a  means  of  getting 
food  or  doing  what  others  did.  In  creeping  or  walk- 
ing, at  which  he  was  very  slow,  partly  on  account  of 
a  lame  foot,  he  went  through  a  similar  series  of  devi- 
ous experiments,  which  apparently  had  no  reference 
to  what  he  saw  others  do. 

He  did  not  begin  to  talk — beyond  using  the  few 
words  already  mentioned — until  over  two  years  and 
eight  months  old ;  having  previously  refused  to  in- 
terest himself  in  it,  although  he  understood  others 
as  well,  apparently,  as  any  child  of  his  age.  He 
preferred  to  make  his  wants  known  by  grunts  and 
signs;  and  instead  of  delighting  in  imitation  he 
evidently  liked  better  a  kind  of  activity  that  was 
only  indirectly  connected  with  the  suggestions  of 
others. 

I  frequently  tried  to  produce  imitation,  but  al- 
most wholly  without  success.  For  example,  when 
he  was  striving  to  accomplish  something  with  his 
blocks  I  would  intervene  and  show  him,  by  example, 

22 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

how,  as  I  thought,  it  might  be  done,  but  these 
suggestions  were  invariably,  so  far  as  I  remember 
or  have  recorded,  received  with  indifference  or  pro- 
test. He  liked  to  puzzle  it  out  quietly  for  himself, 
and  to  be  shown  how  to  do  a  thing  often  seemed 
to  destroy  his  interest  in  it.  Yet  he  would  profit  by 
observation  of  others  in  his  own  fashion,  and  I  some- 
times detected  him  making  use  of  ideas  to  which  he 
seemed  to  pay  no  attention  when  they  were  first  pre- 
sented. In  short,  he  showed  that  aversion,  which 
minds  of  a  pondering,  constructive  turn  perhaps  al- 
ways show,  to  anything  which  suddenly  and  crudely 
broke  in  upon  his  system  of  thought.  At  the  same 
time  that  he  was  so  backward  in  the  ordinary  curric- 
ulum of  childhood,  he  showed -in  other  ways,  which 
it  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  describe,  that  comparison 
and  reflection  were  well  developed.  This  preoccupa- 
tion with  private  experiment  and  reflection,  and  re- 
luctance to  learn  from  others,  were  undoubtedly  a 
cause  of  his  slow  development,  particularly  in  speech, 
his  natural  aptitude  for  which  appeared  in  a  good 
enunciation  and  a  marked  volubility  as  soon  as  he 
really  began  to  talk. 

Imitation  came  all  at  once :  he  seemed  to  perceive 
quite  suddenly  that  this  was  a  short  cut  to  many 
things,  and  took  it  up,  not  in  a  merely  mechanical  or 
suggestive  way,  but  consciously,  intelligently,  as  a 
means  to  an  end.  The  imitative  act,  however,  was 
often  an  end  in  itself,  an  interesting  exercise  of  his 
constructive  faculties,  pursued  at  first  without  much 

23 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

regard  to  anything  beyond.  This  was  the  case  with 
the  utterance  of  words,  and,  later,  with  spelling,  with 
each  of  which  he  became  fascinated  for  its  own  sake 
and  regardless  of  its  use  as  a  means  of  communica- 
tion. 

In  a  second  child,  M.,  a  girl,  I  was  able  to  observe 
the  working  of  a  mind  of  a  different  sort,  and  of  a 
much  more  common  type  as  regards  imitation.  When 
two  months  and  seven  days  old  she  was  observed  to 
make  sounds  in  reply  to  her  mother  when  coaxed 
with  a  certain  pitch  and  inflection  of  voice.  These 
sounds  were  clearly  imitative,  since  they  were  seldom 
made  at  other  times,  but  not  mechanically  so.  They 
were  produced  with  every  appearance  of  mental  effort 
and  of  delight  in  its  success.  Only  vocal  imitations, 
of  this  rudimentary  sort,  were  observed  until  eight 
months  was  nearly  reached,  when  the  first  manual 
imitation,  striking  a  button-hook  upon  the  back  of 
a  chair,  was  noticed.  This  action  had  been  per- 
formed experimentally  before,  and  the  imitation  was 
merely  a  repetition  suggested  by  seeing  her  mother 
do  it,  or  perhaps  by  hearing  the  sound.  After 
this  the  development  of  imitative  activity  proceeded 
much  in  the  usual  way,  which  has  often  been  de- 
scribed. 

In  both  of  these  cases  I  was  a  good  deal  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  the  life  of  children,  as  compared 
with  that  of  adults,  is  less  determined  in  a  merely  sug- 
gestive way,  and  involves  more  will  and  choice,  than 
is  commonly  supposed.  Imitation,  in  the  sense  of 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

visible  or  audible  repetition,  was  not  so  omnipresent 
as  I  had  expected,  and  when  present  seemed  to  be 
in  great  part  rational  and  voluntary  rather  than 
mechanical.  It  is  very  natural  to  assume  that  to 
do  what  someone  else  does  requires  no  mental  ef- 
fort; but  this,  as  applied  to  little  children,  is,  of 
course,  a  great  mistake.  They  cannot  imitate  an 
act  except  by  learning  how  to  do  it,  any  more  than 
grown-up  people  can,  and  for  a  child  to  learn  a  word 
may  be  as  complicated  a  process  as  for  an  older  per- 
son to  learn  a  difficult  piece  on  the  piano.  A  novel 
imitation  is  not  at  all  mechanical,  but  a  strenuous 
voluntary  activity,  accompanied  by  effort  and  fol- 
lowed by  pleasure  in  success.  All  sympathetic  ob- 
servers of  children  must  be  impressed,  I  imagine,  by 
the  evident  mental  stress  and  concentration  which 
often  accompanies  their  endeavors,  whether  imitative 
or  not,  and  is  followed,  as  in  adults,  by  the  appear- 
ance of  relief  when  the  action  has  come  off  success- 
fully* 

The  "  imitative  instinct "  is  sometimes  spoken  of 
as  if  it  were  a  mysterious  something  that  enabled  the 
child  to  perform  involuntarily  and  without  prepara- 

*  The  imitativeness  of  children  is  stimulated  by  the  imitativeness 
of  parents.  A  baby  cannot  hit  upon  any  sort  of  a  noise,  but  the 
admiring  family,  eager  for  communication,  will  imitate  it  again  and 
again,  hoping  to  get  a  repetition.  They  are  usually  disappointed, 
but  the  exercise  probably  causes  the  child  to  notice  the  likeness  of 
the  sounds  and  so  prepares  the  way  for  imitation.  It  is  perhaps 
safe  to  say  that  up  to  the  end  of  the  first  year  the  parents  are  more 
imitative  than  the  child. 

35 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tion  acts  that  are  quite  new  to  him.  It  will  be  found 
difficult,  if  one  reflects  upon  the  matter,  to  conceive 
what  could  be  the  nature  of  an  instinct  or  hereditary 
tendency,  not  to  do  a  definite  thing  previously  per- 
formed by  our  ancestors — as  is  the  case  with  ordi- 
nary instinct —but  to  do  anything,  within  vague 
limits,  which  happened  to  be  done  within  our  sight 
or  hearing.  This  doing  of  new  things  without  defi- 
nite preparation,  either  in  heredity  or  experience, 
would  seem  to  involve  something  like  special  crea- 
tion in  the  mental  and  nervous  organism  :  and  the 
imitation  of  children  has  no  such  character.  It  is 
quite  evidently  an  acquired  power,  and  if  the  act 
imitated  is  at  all  complex  the  learning  process  in- 
volves a  good  deal  of  thought  and  will.  If  there 
is  an  imitative  instinct  it  must,  apparently,  be  some- 
thing in  the  way  of  a  taste  for  repetition,  which 
stimulates  the  learning  process  without,  however, 
having  any  tendency  to  dispense  with  it.  The  taste 
for  repetition  seems,  in  fact,  to  exist,  at  least  in 
most  children,  but  even  this  may  be  sufficiently  ex- 
plained as  a  phase  of  the  general  mental  tendency 
to  act  upon  uncontradicted  ideas.  It  is  a  doctrine 
now  generally  taught  by  psychologists  that  the  idea 
of  an  action  is  itself  a  motive  to  that  action,  and 
tends  intrinsically  to  produce  it  unless  something 
intervenes  to  prevent.  This  being  the  case,  it  would 
appear  that  we  must  always  have  some  impulse  to  do 
what  we  see  done,  provided  it  is  something  we  under- 
stand sufficiently  to  be  able  to  form  a  definite  idea  of 

26 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

doing  it.*  I  am  inclined  to  the  view  that  it  is  unnec- 
essary to  assume,  in  man,  a  special  imitative  instinct, 
but  that  "  as  Preyer  and  others  have  shown  in  the 
case  of  young  children,  mimicry  arises  mainly  from 
pleasure  in  activity  as  such,  and  not  from  its  peculiar 
quality  as  imitation."  f  An  intelligent  child  imitates 
because  he  has  faculties  crying  for  employment,  and 
imitation  is  a  key  that  lets  them  loose :  he  needs  to 
do  things  and  imitation  gives  him  things  to  do.  An 
indication  that  sensible  resemblance  to  the  acts  of 
others  is  not  the  main  thing  sought  is  seen  in  such 
cases  as  the  following  :  M.  had  a  trick  of  raising 
her  hands  above  her  head,  which  she  would  perform, 
when  in  the  mood  for  it,  either  imitatively,  when 
someone  else  did  it,  or  in  response  to  the  words 
"  How  big  is  M.  ?  "  but  she  responded  more  readily 
in  the  second  or  non-imitative  way  than  in  the  other. 
This  example  well  illustrates  the  reason  for  my  pref- 
erence of  the  word  suggestion  over  imitation  to  de- 
scribe these  simple  reactions.  In  this  case  the  action 
performed  had  no  sort  of  resemblance  to  the  form  of 
words  "  How  big  is  M.  ?  "  that  started  it,  and  could 
be  called  imitative  only  in  a  recondite  sense.  All  that 
is  necessary  is  that  there  should  be  a  suggestion,  that 
something  should  be  presented  that  is  connected  in 

*  "  In  like  manner  any  act  or  expression  is  a  stimulus  to  the  nerve- 
centres  that  perceive  or  understand  it.  Unless  their  action  is  in- 
hibited by  the  will,  or  by  counter-stimulation,  they  must  discharge 
themselves  in  movements  that  more  or  less  closely  copy  the  origi- 
nals."— Giddings,  Principles  of  Sociology,  110. 

f  H.  M.  Stanley,  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling,  p.  53. 

27 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  child's  mind  with  the  action  to  be  produced. 
Whether  this  connection  is  by  sensible  resemblance 
or  not  seems  immaterial. 

There  seems  to  be  some  opposition  between  im- 
itation of  the  visible,  external  kind,  and  reflection. 
Children  of  one  sort  are  attracted  by  sensible  re- 
semblance and  so  are  early  and  conspicuously  im- 
itative. If  this  is  kept  up  in  a  mechanical  way  af- 
ter the  acts  are  well  learned,  and  at  the  expense 
of  new  efforts,  it  would  seem  to  be  a  sign  of  men- 
tal apathy,  or  even  defect,  as  in  the  silly  mimicry 
of  some  idiots.  Those  of  another  sort  are  preoccu- 
pied by  the  subtler  combinations  of  thought  which 
do  not,  as  a  rule,  lead  to  obvious  imitation.  Such 
children  are  likely  to  be  backward  in  the  develop- 
ment of  active  faculties,  and  slow  to  observe  except 
where  their  minds  are  specially  interested.  They 
are  also,  if  I  may  judge  by  E.,  slow  to  interpret  feat- 
ures and  tones  of  voice,  guileless  and  unaffected, 
just  because  of  this  lack  of  keen  personal  perceptions, 
and  not  quickly  sympathetic. 

Accordingly,  it  is  not  at  all  clear  that  children 
are,  on  the  whole,  any  more  given  to  imitation  of 
the  mechanical  sort,  any  more  suggestible,  than 
adults.  They  appear  so  to  us  chiefly,  perhaps,  for 
two  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  we  fail  to  realize  the 
thought,  the  will,  the  effort,  they  expend  upon  their 
imitations.  They  do  things  that  have  become  me- 
chanical to  us,  and  we  assume  that  they  are  mechan- 
ical to  them,  though  closer  observation  and  reflection 

28 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

would  show  us  the  contrary.  These  actions  are 
largely  daring  experiments,  strenuous  syntheses  of 
previously  acquired  knowledge,  comparable  in  qual- 
ity to  our  own  most  earnest  efforts,  and  not  to  the 
thoughtless  routine  of  our  lives.  We  do  not  see  that 
their  echoing  of  the  words  they  hear  is  often  not  a 
silly  repetition,  but  a  difficult  and  instructive  exer- 
cise of  the  vocal  apparatus.  Children  imitate  much 
because  they  are  growing  much,  and  imitation  is  a 
principal  means  of  growth.  This  is  true  at  any  age ; 
the  more  alive  and  progressive  a  man  is  the  more 
actively  he  is  admiring  and  profiting  by  his  chosen 
models. 

A  second  reason  is  that  adults  imitate  at  longer 
range,  as  it  were,  so  that  the  imitative  character  of 
their  acts  is  not  so  obvious.  They  come  into  contact 
with  more  sorts  of  persons,  largely  unknown  to  one 
another,  and  have  access  to  a  greater  variety  of  sug- 
gestions in  books.  Accordingly  they  present  a  de- 
ceitful appearance  of  independence  simply  because 
we  do  not  see  their  models. 

Though  we  may  be  likely  to  exaggerate  the  differ- 
once  between  children  and  adults  as  regards  the  sway 
of  suggestive  influences,  there  is  little  danger  of  our 
overestimating  the  importance  of  these  in  the  life  of 
mankind  at  large.  The  common  impression  among 
those  who  have  given  no  special  study  to  the  matter 
appears  to  be  that  suggestion  has  little  part  in  the 
mature  life  of  a  rational  being ;  and  though  the  con- 

29 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trol  of  involuntary  impulses  is  recognized  in  tricks 
of  speech  and  manner,  in  fads,  fashions,  and  the  like, 
it  is  not  perceived  to  touch  the  more  important  points 
of  conduct.  The  fact,  however,  is  that  the  main  cur- 
rent of  our  thought  is  made  up  of  impulses  absorbed 
without  deliberate  choice  from  the  life  about  us,  or 
else  arising  from  hereditary  instinct,  or  from  habit ; 
while  the  function  of  higher  thought  and  of  will  is 
to  organize  and  apply  these  impulses.  To  revert 
to  an  illustration  already  suggested,  the  voluntary  is 
related  to  the  involuntary  very  much  as  the  captain 
of  a  ship  is  related  to  the  seamen  and  subordinate 
officers.  Their  work  is  not  altogether  of  a  different 
sort  from  his,  but  is  of  a  lower  grade  in  a  mental 
series.  He  supplies  the  higher  sort  of  co-ordination, 
but  the  main  bulk  of  the  activity  is  of  the  mentally 
lower  order. 

The  chief  reason  why  popular  attention  should  fix 
itself  upon  voluntary  thought  and  action,  and  tend  to 
overlook  the  involuntary,  is  that  choice  is  acutely 
conscious,  and  so  must,  from  its  very  nature,  be  the 
focus  of  introspective  thought.  Because  he  is  an 
individual,  a  specialized,  contending  bit  of  psychical 
force,  a  man  very  naturally  holds  his  will,  in  its 
individual  aspect,  to  be  of  supreme  moment.  If  we 
did  not  feel  a  great  importance  in  the  things  we  do 
we  could  not  will  to  do  them.  And  in  the  life  of 
other  people  voluntary  action  seems  supreme,  for 
very  much  the  same  reasons  that  it  does  in  our  own. 
It  is  always  in  the  foreground,  active,  obvious,  iutru- 

30 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

sive,  the  thing  that  creates  differences  and  so  fixes 
the  attention.  We  notice  nothing  except  through 
contrast ;  and  accordingly  the  mechanical  control  of 
suggestion,  affecting  all  very  much  alike,  is  usually 
unperceived.  As  we  do  not  notice  the  air,  precisely 
because  it  is  always  with  us,  so,  for  the  same  reason, 
we  do  not  notice  a  prevailing  mode  of  dress.  In  like 
manner  we  are  ignorant  of  our  local  accent  and  bear- 
ing, and  are  totally  unaware,  for  the  most  part,  of 
all  that  is  common  to  our  time,  our  country,  our  cus- 
tomary environment.  Choice  is  a  central  area  of 
light  and  activity  upon  which  our  eyes  are  fixed ; 
while  the  unconscious  is  a  dark,  illimitable  back- 
ground enveloping  this  area.  Or,  again,  choice  is 
like  the  earth,  which  we  unconsciously  assume  to  be 
the  principal  part  of  creation,  simply  because  it  is 
the  centre  of  our  interest  and  the  field  of  our  exer- 
tions. 

The  practical  limitations  upon  the  scope  of  choice 
arise,  first,  from  its  very  nature  as  a  selective  and 
organizing  agent,  working  upon  comparatively  simple 
or  suggestive  ideas  as  its  raw  material,  and,  second, 
from  the  fact  that  it  absorbs  a  great  deal  of  vital 
energy.  Owing  to  the  first  circumstance  its  activity 
is  always  confined  to  points  where  there  is  a  compe- 
tition of  ideas.  So  long  as  an  idea  is  uncontradicted, 
not  felt  to  be  in  any  way  inconsistent  with  others,  we 
take  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  is  a  truth,  though 
hard  for  us  to  realize,  that  if  we  had  lived  in  Dante's 

31 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

time  we  should  have  believed  in  a  material  Hell, 
Purgatory,  and  Paradise,  as  he  did,  and  that  our 
doubts  of  this,  and  of  many  other  things  which  his 
age  did  not  question,  have  nothing  to  do  with  our 
natural  intelligence,  but  are  made  possible  and  neces- 
sary by  competing  ideas  which  the  growth  of  knowl- 
edge has  enabled  us  to  form.  Our  particular  minds 
or  wills  are  members  of  a  slowly  growing  whole,  and 
at  any  given  moment  are  limited  in  scope  by  the  state 
of  the  whole,  and  especially  of  those  parts  of  the 
whole  with  which  they  are  in  most  active  contact. 
Our  thought  is  never  isolated,  but  always  some  sort  of 
a  response  to  the  influences  around  us,  so  that  we  can 
hardly  have  thoughts  that  are  not  in  some  way  aroused 
by  communication.  Will — free  will  if  you  choose — 
is  thus  a  co-operative  whole,  not  an  aggregation  of 
disconnected  fragments,  and  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  freedom  under  law,  like  that  of  the  good 
citizen,  not  anarchy.  We  learn  to  speak  by  the 
exercise  of  will,  but  no  one,  I  suppose,  will  assert 
that  an  infant  who  hears  only  French  is  free  to  learn 
English.  Where  suggestions  are  numerous  and  con- 
flicting we  feel  the  need  to  choose ;  to  make  these 
choices  is  the  function  of  will,  and  the  result  of  them 
is  a  step  in  the  progress  of  life,  an  act  of  freedom  or 
creation,  if  you  wish  to  call  it  so ;  but  where  sugges- 
tion is  single,  as  with  religious  dogma  in  ages  of  faith, 
we  are  very  much  at  its  mercy.  We  do  not  perceive 
these  limitations,  because  there  is  no  point  of  vantage 
from  which  we  can  observe  and  measure  the  general 

32 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

state  of  thought ;  there  is  nothing  to  compare  it  "with 
Only  when  it  begins  to  change,  when  competing  sug- 
gestions enter  our  minds  and  we  get  new  points  of 
view  from  which  we  can  look  back  upon  it,  do  we 
begin  to  notice  its  power  over  us.  * 

The  exhausting  character  of  choice,  of  making  up 
one's  mind,  is  a  matter  of  common  experience.  In 
some  way  the  mental  synthesis,  this  calling  in  and 
reducing  to  order  the  errant  population  of  the  mind, 
draws  severely  upon  the  vital  energy,  and  one  of  the 
invariable  signs  of  fatigue  is  a  dread  of  making  decis- 
ions and  assuming  responsibility.  In  our  compli- 
cated life  the  will  can,  in  fact,  manage  only  a  small 
part  of  the  competing  suggestions  that  are  within 
our  reach.  What  we  are  all  forced  to  do  is  to  choose 
a  field  of  action  which  for  some  reason  we  look  upon 
as  specially  interesting  or  important,  and  exercise 

*  Goethe,  in  various  places,  contrasts  modern  art  and  literature 
with  those  of  the  Greeks  in  respect  to  the  fact  that  the  former 
express  individual  characteristics,  the  latter  those  of  a  race  and  an 
epoch.  Thus  in  a  letter  to  Schiller — No.  631  of  the  Goethe-Schiller 
correspondence — he  says  of  Paradise  Lost,  "  In  the  case  of  this 
poem,  as  with  all  modern  works  of  art,  it  is  in  reality  the  individual 
that  manifests  itself  that  awakens  the  interest." 

Can  there  be  some  illusion  mixed  with  the  truth  of  this  idea  ?  Is 
it  not  the  case  that  the  nearer  a  thing  is  to  our  habit  of  thought  the 
more  clearly  we  see  the  individual,  and  the  more  vaguely,  if  at  all, 
the  universal  ?  And  would  not  an  ancient  Greek,  perhaps,  have 
seen  as  much  of  what  was  peculiar  to  each  artist,  and  as  little  of 
what  was  common  to  all,  as  we  do  in  a  writer  of  our  own  time  ? 
The  principle  is  much  the  same  as  that  which  makes  all  Chinamen 
look  pretty  much  alike  to  us :  we  see  the  type  because  it  is  so 
different  from  what  we  are  used  to,  but  only  one  who  lives  within 
it  can  fully  perceive  the  differences  among  individuals. 

33 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

our  choice  in  that ;  in  other  matters  protecting  our- 
selves, for  the  most  part,  by  some  sort  of  mechanical 
control — some  accepted  personal  authority,  some 
local  custom,  some  professional  tradition,  or  the  like. 
Indeed,  to  know  where  and  how  to  narrow  the  activ- 
ity of  the  will  in  order  to  preserve  its  tone  and  vigor 
for  its  most  essential  functions,  is  a  great  part  of 
knowing  how  to  live.  An  incontinent  exercise  of 
choice  wears  people  out,  so  that  many  break  down 
and  yield  even  essentials  to  discipline  and  authority 
in  some  form ;  while  many  more  wish,  at  times,  to  do 
so  and  indulge  themselves,  perhaps,  in  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  or  "The  Christian's  Secret  of  a  Happy  Life." 
Not  a  few  so  far  exhaust  the  power  of  self-direction 
as  to  be  left  drifting  at  the  mercy  of  undisciplined 
passions.  There  are  many  roads  to  degeneracy,  and 
persons  of  an  eager,  strenuous  nature  not  infrequently 
take  this  one. 

A  common  instance  of  the  insidious  power  of  milieu 
is  afforded  by  the  transition  from  university  educa- 
tion to  getting  a  living.  At  a  university  one  finds 
himself,  if  he  has  any  vigor  of  imagination,  in  one  of 
the  widest  environments  the  world  can  afford.  He 
has  access  to  the  suggestions  of  the  richest  minds  of 
all  times  and  countries,  and  has  also,  or  should  have, 
time  and  encouragement  to  explore,  in  his  own  way, 
this  spacious  society.  It  is  his  business  to  think,  to 
aspire,  and  grow ;  and  if  he  is  at  all  capable  of  it  he 
does  so.  Philosophy  and  art  and  science  and  the 

34 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

betterment  of  mankind  are  real  and  living  interests 
to  him,  largely  because  he  is  in  the  great  stream  of 
higher  thought  that  flows  through  libraries.  Now 
let  him  graduate  and  enter,  we  will  say,  upon  the 
lumber  business  at  Kawkawlin.  Here  he  finds  the 
scope  of  existence  largely  taken  up  with  the  details 
of  this  industry — wholesome  for  him  in  some  ways, 
but  likely  to  be  overemphasized.  These  and  a  few 
other  things  are  repeated  over  and  over  again,  dinned 
into  him,  everywhere  assumed  to  be  the  solid  things 
of  life,  so  that  he  must  believe  in  them ;  while  the 
rest  grows  misty  and  begins  to  lose  hold  upon  him. 
He  cannot  make  things  seem  real  that  do  not  enter 
into  his  experience,  and  if  he  resists  the  narrowing 
environment  it  must  be  by  keeping  touch  with  a 
larger  world,  through  books  or  other  personal  inter- 
course, and  by  the  exercise  of  imagination.  Marcus 
Aurelius  told  himself  that  he  was  free  to  think  what 
he  chose,  but  it  appears  that  he  realized  this  freedom 
by  keeping  books  about  him  that  suggested  the  kind 
of  thoughts  he  chose  to  think ;  and  it  is  only  in  some 
such  sense  as  this  implies  that  the  assertion  is  true. 
When  the  palpable  environment  does  not  suit  us  we 
can,  if  our  minds  are  vigorous  enough,  build  up  a 
better  one  out  of  remembered  material ;  but  we  must 
have  material  of  some  sort. 

It  is  easy  to  feel  the  effect  of  surroundings  in  such 
cases  as  this,  because  of  the  sharp  and  definite 
change,  and  because  the  imagination  clings  to  one 
state  long  after  the  senses  are  subdued  to  the  other ; 

35 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

but  it  is  not  so  with  national  habits  and  sentiments, 
which  so  completely  envelop  us  that  we  are  for  the 
most  part  unaware  of  them.  The  more  thoroughly 
American  a  man  is  the  less  he  can  perceive  Ameri- 
canism. He  will  embody  it ;  all  he  does,  says,  or 
writes,  will  be  full  of  it ;  but  he  can  never  truly  see 
it,  simply  because  he  has  no  exterior  point  of  view 
from  which  to  look  at  it.  If  he  goes  to  Europe  he 
begins  to  get  by  contrast  some  vague  notion  of  it, 
though  he  will  never  be  able  to  see  just  what  it  is 
that  makes  futile  his  attempts  to  seem  an  English- 
man, a  German,  or  an  Italian.  Our  appearance  to 
other  peoples  is  like  one's  own  voice,  which  one 
never  hears  quite  as  others  hear  it,  and  which  sounds 
strange  when  it  comes  back  from  the  phonograph. 

The  control  of  those  larger  movements  of  thought 
and  sentiment  that  make  a  historical  epoch  is  still 
less  conscious,  more  inevitable.  Only  the  imagina- 
tive student,  in  his  best  hours,  can  really  free  himself 
— and  that  only  in  some  respects — from  the  limita- 
tions of  his  time  and  see  things  from  a  height.  For 
the  most  part  the  people  of  other  epochs  seem 
strange,  outlandish,  or  a  little  insane.  We  can 
scarcely  rid  ourselves  of  the  impression  that  the  way 
of  life  we  are  used  to  is  the  normal,  and  that  other 
ways  are  eccentric.  Dr.  Sidis  holds  that  the  people 
of  the  Middle  Ages  were  in  a  quasi-hypnotic  state, 
and  instances  the  crusades,  dancing  manias,  and  the 
like.*  But  the  question  is,  would  not  our  own  time, 
*  See  the  latter  chapters  of  his  Psychology  of  Suggestion. 
36 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

viewed  from  an  equal  distance,  appear  to  present  the 
signs  of  abnormal  suggestibility  ?  "Will  not  the  in- 
tense preoccupation  with  material  production,  the 
hurry  and  strain  of  our  cities,  the  draining  of  life 
into  one  channel,  at  the  expense  of  breadth,  richness, 
and  beauty,  appear  as  mad  as  the  crusades,  and  per- 
haps of  a  lower  type  of  madness  ?  Could  anything  be 
more  indicative  of  a  slight  but  general  insanity  than 
the  aspect  of  the  crowd  on  the  streets  of  Chicago  ? 

An  illustration  of  this  unconsciousness  of  what  is 
distinctive  in  our  time  is  the  fact  that  those  who  par- 
ticipate in  momentous  changes  have  seldom  any  but 
the  vaguest  notion  of  their  significance.  There  is 
perhaps  no  time  in  the  history  of  art  that  seems  to 
us  now  so  splendid,  so  dramatic,  as  that  of  the  sud- 
den rise  of  Gothic  architecture  in  northern  France, 
and  the  erection  of  the  church  of  St.  Denis  at  Paris 
was  its  culmination :  yet  Professor  C.  E.  Norton, 
speaking  of  the  Abbot  Suger,  who  erected  it,  and  of 
his  memoirs,  says,  "  Under  his  watchful  and  intelli- 
gent oversight  the  church  became  the  most  splendid 
and  the  most  interesting  building  of  the  century ;  but 
of  the  features  that  gave  it  special  interest,  that  make 
it  one  of  the  most  important  monuments  of  mediaeval 
architecture,  neither  Suger,  in  his  account  of  it,  nor 
his  biographer,  nor  any  contemporary  writer,  says  a 
single  word."  *  To  Suger  and  his  time  the  Gothic, 
it  would  seem,  was  simply  a  new  and  improved  way 
of  building  a  church,  a  technical  matter  with  which 

*  See  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  79,  p.  770. 
37 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

he  had  little  concern,  except  to  see  that  it  was  duly 
earned  out  according  to  specifications.  It  was  de- 
veloped by  draughtsmen  and  handicraftsmen,  mostly 
nameless,  who  felt  their  own  thrill  of  constructive 
delight  as  they  worked,  but  had  no  thought  of  his- 
torical glory.  It  is  no  doubt  the  same  in  our  own 
time,  and  Mr.  Bryce  has  noted  with  astonishment 
the  unconsciousness  or  indifference  of  those  who 
founded  cities  in  western  America,  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  doing  something  that  would  be  memorable 
and  influential  for  ages.* 

I  have  already  said,  or  implied,  that  the  activity 
of  the  will  reflects  the  state  of  the  social  order.  A 
constant  and  strenuous  exercise  of  volition  implies 
complexity  in  the  surrounding  life  from  which  sug- 
gestions come,  while  in  a  simple  society  choice  is 
limited  in  scope  and  life  is  comparatively  mechan- 
ical. It  is  the  variety  of  social  intercourse  or,  what 
conies  to  the  same  thing,  the  character  of  social 
organization,  that  determines  the  field  of  choice; 
and  accordingly  there  is  a  tendency  for  the  scope 
of  the  will  to  increase  with  that  widening  and  in- 
tensification of  life  that  is  so  conspicuous  a  feature 
of  recent  history.  This  change  is  bound  up  with  the 
extension  and  diffusion  of  communication,  opening 
up  innumerable  channels  by  which  competing  sug- 
gestions may  enter  the  mind.  We  are  still  depend- 
ent upon  environment — life  is  always  a  give  and  take 

*  See  The  American  Commonwealth,  vol.  ii.,  p.  705. 

38 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

with  surrounding  conditions — but  environment  is  be- 
coming very  wide,  and  in  the  case  of  imaginative 
persons  may  extend  itself  to  almost  any  ideas  that 
the  past  or  present  life  of  the  race  has  brought  into 
being.  This  brings  opportunity  for  congenial  choice 
and  characteristic  personal  growth,  and  at  the  same 
time  a  good  deal  of  distraction  and  strain.  There  is 
more  and  more  need  of  stability,  and  of  a  vigorous 
rejection  of  excessive  material,  if  one  would  escape 
mental  exhaustion  and  degeneracy.  Choice  is  like  a 
river ;  it  broadens  as  it  comes  down  through  history 
— though  there  are  always  banks — and  the  wider  it 
becomes  the  more  persons  drown  in  it.  Stronger 
and  stronger  swimming  is  required,  and  types  of 
character  that  lack  vigor  and  self-reliance  are  more 
and  more  likely  to  go  under. 

The  aptitude  to  yield  to  impulse  in  a  mechanical 
or  reflex  way  is  called  suggestibility.  As  might  be 
expected,  it  is  subject  to  great  variations  in  different 
persons,  and  in  the  same  person  under  different  con- 
ditions. Abnormal  suggestibility  has  received  much 
study,  and  there  is  a  great  body  of  valuable  literature 
relating  to  it.  I  wish  in  this  connection  only  to  re- 
call a  few  well-known  principles  which  the  student 
of  normal  social  life  needs  to  have  in  mind. 

As  would  naturally  follow  from  our  analysis  of  the 
relation  between  suggestion  and  choice,  suggestibility 
is  simply  the  absence  of  the  controlling  and  organiz- 
ing action  of  the  reflective  will.  This  function  not 

39 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

being  properly  performed,  thought  and  action  are 
disintegrated  and  fly  off  on  tangents;  the  captain 
being  disabled  the  crew  breaks  up  into  factions, 
and  discipline  goes  to  pieces.  Accordingly,  whatever 
weakens  the  reason,  and  thus  destroys  the  breadth 
and  symmetry  of  consciousness,  produces  some  form 
of  suggestibility.  To  be  excited  is  to  be  suggestible, 
that  is  to  become  liable  to  yield  impulsively  to  an 
idea  in  harmony  with  the  exciting  emotion.  An 
angry  man  is  suggestible  as  regards  denunciation, 
threats,  and  the  like,  a  jealous  one  as  regards  sus- 
picions, and  similarly  with  any  passion. 

The  suggestibility  of  crowds  is  a  peculiar  form  of 
that  limitation  of  choice  by  the  environment  already 
discussed.  We  have  here  a  very  transient  environ- 
ment which  owes  its  power  over  choice  to  the  vague 
but  potent  emotion  so  easily  generated  in  dense  ag- 
gregates. The  thick  humanity  is  in  itself  exciting, 
and  the  will  is  further  stupefied  by  the  sense  of  insig- 
nificance,  by  the  strangeness  of  the  situation,  and  by 
the  absence,  as  a  rule,  of  any  separate  purpose  to 
maintain  an  independent  momentum.  A  man  is  like  a 
ship  in  that  he  cannot  guide  his  course  unless  he  has 
way  on.  If  he  drifts  he  will  shift  about  with  any 
light  air ;  and  the  man  in  the  crowd  is  usually  drift- 
ing, is  not  pursuing  any  settled  line  of  action  in  which 
he  is  sustained  by  knowledge  and  habit.  This  state 
of  mind,  added  to  intense  emotion  directed  by  some 
series  of  special  suggestions,  is  the  source  of  the 
wild  and  often  destructive  behavior  of  crowds  and 

40 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

mobs,  as  well  as  of  a  great  deal  of  heroic  enthusiasm. 
An  orator,  for  instance,  first  unifying  and  heightening 
the  emotional  state  of  his  audience  by  some  humorous 
or  pathetic  incident,  will  be  able,  if  tolerably  skilful, 
to  do  pretty  much  as  he  pleases  with  them,  so  long 
as  he  does  not  go  against  their  settled  habits  of 
thought.  Anger,  always  a  ready  passion,  is  easily 
aroused,  appeals  to  resentment  being  the  staples  of 
much  popular  oratory,  and  under  certain  conditions 
readily  expresses  itself  in  stoning,  burning,  and  lynch- 
ing. And  so  with  fear :  General  Grant  in  describ- 
ing the  battle  of  Shiloh  gives  a  picture  of  several 
thousand  men  on  a  hill-side  in  the  rear,  incapable  of 
moving,  though  threatened  to  be  shot  for  cowardice 
where  they  lay.  Yet  these  very  men,  calmed  and 
restored  to  their  places,  were  among  those  who  hero- 
ically fought  and  won  the  next  day's  battle.  They 
had  been  restored  to  the  domination  of  another  class 
of  suggestions,  namely  those  implied  in  military 
discipline.* 

Suggestibility  from  exhaustion  or  strain  is  a  rather 
common  condition  with  many  of  us.  Probably  all 
eager  brain  workers  find  themselves  now  and  then 
in  a  state  where  they  are  "  too  tired  to  stop."  The 
overwrought  mind  loses  the  healthy  power  of  cast- 
ing off  its  burden,  and  seems  capable  of  nothing 
but  going  on  and  on  in  the  same  painful  and  futile 
course.  One  may  know  that  he  is  accomplishing 
nothing,  that  work  done  in  such  a  state  of  mind 

*  Memoirs  of  U.  S.  Grant,  vol.  i.,  p.  344. 
41 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  always  bad  work,  and  that  "  that  way  madness 
lies,"  but  yet  be  too  weak  to  resist,  chained  to  the 
wheel  of  his  thought  so  that  he  must  wait  till  it  runs 
down.  And  such  a  state,  however  induced,  is  the 
opportunity  for  all  sorts  of  undisciplined  impulses, 
perhaps  some  gross  passion,  like  anger,  dread,  the 
need  of  drink,  or  the  like. 

According  to  Mr.  Tylor,*  fasting,  solitude,  and 
physical  exhaustion  by  dancing,  shouting,  or  flagel- 
lation are  very  generally  employed  by  savage  peoples 
to  bring  on  abnormal  states  of  mind  of  which  sug- 
gestibility— the  sleep  of  choice,  and  control  by  some 
idea  from  the  subconscious  life — is  always  a  trait. 
The  visions  and  ecstasies  following  the  fastings, 
watchings,  and  flagellations  of  Christian  devotees  of 
an  earlier  time  seem  to  belong,  psychologically,  in 
much  the  same  category. 

It  is  well  known  that  suggestibility  is  limited  by 
habit,  or,  more  accurately  stated,  that  habit  is  itself 
a  perennial  source  of  suggestions  that  set  bounds  and 
conditions  upon  the  power  of  fresh  suggestions.  A 
total  abstainer  will  resist  the  suggestion  to  drink,  a 
modest  person  will  refuse  to  do  anything  indecent, 
and  so  on.  People  are  least  liable  to  yield  to  irra- 
tional suggestions,  to  be  stampeded  with  the  crowd, 
in  matters  with  which  they  are  familiar,  so  that  they 
have  habits  regarding  them.  The  soldier,  in  his 
place  in  the  ranks  and  with  his  captain  in  sight,  will 
march  forward  to  certain  death,  very  likely  without 

*  See  his  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.,  p.  372. 
42 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

any  acute  emotion  whatever,  simply  because  he  has 
the  habits  that  constitute  discipline  ;  and  so  with 
firemen,  policemen,  sailors,  brakemen,  physicians, 
and  many  others  who  learn  to  deal  with  life  and 
death  as  calmly  as  they  read  a  newspaper.  It  is  all 
in  the  day's  work. 

As  regards  the  greater  or  less  suggestibility  of  dif- 
ferent persons  there  is,  of  course,  no  distinct  line  be- 
tween the  normal  and  the  abnormal ;  it  is  simply  a 
matter  of  the  greater  or  less  efficiency  of  the  higher 
mental  organization.  Most  people,  perhaps,  are  so 
far  suggestible  that  they  make  no  energetic  and  per- 
sistent attempt  to  interpret  in  any  broad  way  the 
elements  of  life  accessible  to  them,  but  receive  the 
stamp  of  some  rather  narrow  and  simple  class  of  sug- 
gestions to  which  their  allegiance  is  yielded.  There 
are  innumerable  people  of  much  energy  but  sluggish 
intellect,  who  will  go  ahead — as  all  who  have  energy 
must  do — but  what  direction  they  take  is  a  matter  of 
the  opportune  suggestion.  The  humbler  walks  of 
religion  and  philanthropy,  for  instance,  the  Salvation 
Army,  the  village  prayer-meeting,  and  the  city  mis- 
sion, are  full  of  such.  They  do  not  reason  on  gen- 
eral topics,  but  believe  and  labor.  The  intellectual 
travail  of  the  time  does  not  directly  touch  them.  At 
some  epoch  in  the  past,  perhaps  in  some  hour  of 
emotional  exaltation,  something  was  printed  on  their 
minds  to  remain  there  till  death,  and  be  read  and 
followed  daily.  To  the  philosopher  such  people 
are  fanatics;  but  their  function  is  as  important  as 

43 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

his.  They  are  repositories  of  moral  energy — which 
he  is  very  likely  to  lack — they  are  the  people  who 
brought  in  Christianity  and  have  kept  it  going  ever 
since.  And  this  is  only  one  of  many  comparatively 
automatic  types  of  mankind.  Rationality,  in  the 
sense  of  a  patient  and  open-minded  attempt  to  think 
out  the  general  problems  of  life,  is,  and  perhaps  al- 
ways must  be,  confined  to  a  small  minority  even  of 
the  most  intelligent  populations. 


44 


CHAPTER  in 
SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

THE  SOCIABILITY  OF  CHILDREN — IMAGINARY  CONVERSATION  AND 
ITS  SIGNIFICANCE — THE  NATURE  OF  THE  IMPULSE  TO  COMMU- 
NICATE— THERE  is  No  SEPARATION  BETWEEN  REAL  AND  IMAG- 
INARY PERSONS — NOR  BETWEEN  THOUGHT  AND  INTERCOURSE 
— THE  STUDY  AND  INTERPRETATION  OF  EXPRESSION  BY  CHIL- 
DREN— THE  SYMBOL  OR  SENSUOUS  NUCLEUS  OF  PERSONAL 
IDEAS — PERSONAL  PHYSIOGNOMY  IN  ART  AND  LITERATURE — IN 
THE  IDEA  OF  SOCIAL  GROUPS  —  SENTIMENT  IN  PERSONAL 
IDEAS — THE  PERSONAL  IDEA  is  THE  IMMEDIATE  SOCIAL  REAL- 
ITY— SOCIETY  MUST  BE  STUDIED  IN  THE  IMAGINATION — THE 
POSSIBLE  REALITY  OF  INCORPOREAL  PERSONS— THE  MATERIAL 
NOTION  OF  PERSONALITY  CONTRASTED  WITH  THE  NOTION 
BASED  ON  A  STUDY  OF  PERSONAL  IDEAS — SELF  AND  OTHER 
IN  PERSONAL  IDEAS — PERSONAL  OPPOSITION — FURTHER  ILLUS- 
TRATION AND  DEFENCE  OF  THE  VIEW  OF  PERSONS  AND  SOCI- 
ETY HERE  SET  FORTH. 

To  any  but  a  mother  a  new-born  child  hardly  seems 
human.  It  appears  rather  to  be  a  strange  little  ani- 
mal, wonderful  indeed,  exquisitely  finished  even  to  the 
finger-nails ;  mysterious,  awakening  a  fresh  sense  of 
our  ignorance  of  the  nearest  things  of  life,  but  not 
friendly,  not  lovable.  It  is  only  after  some  days  that 
a  kindly  nature  begins  to  express  itself  and  to  grow 
into  something  that  can  be  sympathized  with  and 
personally  cared  for.  The  earliest  signs  of  it  are 
chiefly  certain  smiles  and  babbling  sounds,  which  are 
a  matter  of  fascinating  observation  to  anyone  inter- 
ested iri  the  genesis  of  social  feeling. 

45 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AOT)  THE  SOCIAL  OEDEE 

Spasmodic  smiles  or  grimaces  occur  even  during 
the  first  week  of  life,  and  at  first  seem  to  mean  noth- 
ing in  particular.  I  have  watched  the  face  of  an 
infant  a  week  old  while  a  variety  of  expressions, 
smiles,  frowns,  and  so  on,  passed  over  it  in  rapid 
succession :  it  was  as  if  the  child  were  rehearsing  a 
repertory  of  emotional  expression  belonging  to  it  by 
instinct.  So  soon  as  they  can  be  connected  with 
anything  definite  these  rudimentary  smiles  appear  to 
be  a  sign  of  satisfaction.  Mrs.  Moore  says  that  her 
child  smiled  on  the  sixth  day  "  when  comfortable,"  * 
and  that  this  "never  occurred  when  the  child  was 
known  to  be  in  pain."  Preyer  notes  a  smile  on  the 
face  of  a  sleeping  child,  after  nursing,  on  the  tenth 
day.f  They  soon  begin  to  connect  themselves  quite 
definitely  with  sensible  objects,  such  as  bright  color, 
voices,  movements,  and  fondling.  At  the  same  time 
the  smile  gradually  develops  from  a  grimace  into  a 
subtler,  more  human  expression,  and  Dr.  Perez,  who 
seems  to  have  studied  a  large  number  of  children,  says 
that  all  whom  he  observed  smiled,  when  pleased,  by 
the  time  they  were  two  months  old.J  When  a  child 
is,  say,  five  months  old,  no  doubt  can  remain,  in  most 
cases,  that  the  smile  has  become  an  expression  of 
pleasure  in  the  movements,  sounds,  touches,  and 
general  appearance  of  other  people.  It  would  seem, 
however,  that  personal  feeling  is  not  at  first  clearly 

*  K.  C.  Moore,  The  Mental  Development  of  a  Child,  p.  37. 
•J- The  Senses  and  the  Will,  p.  295. 
J  See  his  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  13. 
46 


differentiated  from  pleasures  of  sight,  sound,  and 
touch  of  other  origin,  or  from  animal  satisfactions 
having  no  obvious  cause.  Both  of  my  children 
expended  much  of  their  early  sociability  on  inani- 
mate objects,  such  as  a  red  Japanese  screen,  a  swing- 
ing lamp,  a  bright  door-knob,  an  orange,  and  the 
like,  babbling  and  smiling  at  them  for  many  minutes 
at  a  time  ;  and  M.,  when  about  three  months  old  and 
later,  would  often  lie  awake  laughing  and  chattering 
in  the  dead  of  night.  The  general  impression  left 
upon  one  is  that  the  early  manifestations  of  sociabil- 
ity indicate  less  fellow-feeling  than  the  adult  imagi- 
nation likes  to  impute,  but  are  expressions  of  a 
pleasure  which  persons  excite  chiefly  because  they 
offer  such  a  variety  of  stimuli  to  sight,  hearing,  and 
touch ;  or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  kindliness,  while  ex- 
isting almost  from  the  first,  is  vague  and  undiscrimi- 
nating,  has  not  yet  become  fixed  upon  its  proper 
objects,  but  flows  out  upon  all  the  pleasantness  the 
child  finds  about  him,  like  that  of  St.  Francis,  when, 
in  his  "Canticle  of  the  Sun,"  he  addresses  the  sun 
and  the  moon,  stars,  winds,  clouds,  fire,  earth,  and 
water,  as  brothers  and  sisters.  Indeed,  there  is  noth- 
ing about  personal  feeling  which  sharply  marks  it 
off  from  other  feeling  ;  here  as  elsewhere  we  find  no 
fences,  but  gradual  transition,  progressive  differen- 
tiation. 

I  do  not  think  that  early  smiles  are  imitative.  I 
observed  both  my  children  carefully  to  discover 
whether  they  smiled  in  response  to  a  smile,  and  ob- 

47 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tained  negative  results  when  they  were  under  ten 
months  old.  A  baby  does  not  smile  by  imitation, 
but  because  he  is  pleased  ;  and  what  pleases  him  in 
the  first  year  of  life  is  usually  some  rather  obvious 
stimulus  to  the  senses.  If  you  wish  a  smile  you 
must  earn  it  by  acceptable  exertion  ;  it  does  no  good 
to  smirk.  The  belief  that  many  people  seem  to  have 
that  infants  respond  to  smiling  is  possibly  due  to  the 
fact  that  when  a  grown-up  person  appears,  both  he 
and  the  infant  are  likely  to  smile,  each  at  the  other  ; 
but  although  the  smiles  are  simultaneous  one  need 
not  be  the  cause  of  the  other,  and  many  observations 
lead  me  to  think  that  it  makes  no  difference  to  the 
infant  whether  the  grown-up  person  smiles  or  not. 
He  has  not  yet  learned  to  appreciate  this  rather  subtle 
phenomenon. 

At  this  and  at  all  later  ages  the  delight  in  compan- 
ionship so  evident  in  children  may  be  ascribed  partly 
to  specific  social  emotion  or  sentiment,  and  partly  to 
a  need  of  stimulating  suggestions  to  enable  them  to 
gratify  their  instinct  for  various  sorts  of  mental  and 
physical  activity.  The  influence  of  the  latter  appears 
in  their  marked  preference  for  active  persons,  for 
grown-up  people  who  will  play  with  them — provided 
they  do  so  with  tact — and  especially  for  other  chil- 
dren. It  is  the  same  throughout  life ;  alone  one  is 
like  fireworks  without  a  match  :  he  cannot  set  himself 
off,  but  is  a  victim  of  ennui,  the  prisoner  of  some  tire- 
some train  of  thought  that  holds  his  mind  simply 
by  the  absence  of  a  competitor.  A  good  companion 

48 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

brings  release  and  fresh  activity,  the  primal  delight 
in  a  fuller  existence.  So  with  the  child:  what  ex- 
citement when  visiting  children  come !  He  shouts, 
laughs,  jumps  about,  produces  his  playthings  and  all 
his  accomplishments.  He  needs  to  express  himself, 
and  a  companion  enables  him  to  do  so.  The  shout 
of  another  boy  in  the  distance  gives  him  the  joy  of 
shouting  in  response. 

But  the  need  is  for  something  more  than  muscular 
or  sensory  activities.  There  is  also  a  need  of  feeling, 
an  overflowing  of  personal  emotion  and  sentiment, 
set  free  by  the  act  of  communication.  By  the  time  a 
child  is  a  year  old  the  social  feeling  that  at  first  is 
indistinguishable  from  sensuous  pleasure  has  become 
much  specialized  upon  persons,  and  from  that  time 
onward  to  call  it  forth  by  reciprocation  is  a  chief  aim 
of  his  life.  Perhaps  it  will  not  be  out  of  place  to 
emphasize  this  by  transcribing  two  or  three  notes 
taken  from  life. 

"M.  will  now  [eleven  months  old]  hold  up  something 
she  has  found,  e.  g. ,  the  petal  of  a  flower,  or  a  little  stick, 
demanding  your  attention  to  it  by  grunts  and  squeals. 
When  you  look  and  make  some  motion  or  exclamation  she 
smiles. ' ' 

"  R.  [four  years  old]  talks  all  day  long,  to  real  compan- 
ions, if  they  will  listen,  if  not  to  imaginary  ones.  As  I  sit 
on  the  steps  this  morning  he  seems  to  wish  me  to  share  his 
every  thought  and  sensation.  He  describes  everything  he 
does,  although  I  can  see  it,  saying,  '  Now  I'm  digging  up 
little  stones,'  etc.  I  must  look  at  the  butterfly,  feel  of  the 
fuzz  on  the  clover  stems,  and  try  to  squawk  on  the  daride- 

49 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

lion  stems.  Meanwhile  he  is  reminded  of  what  happened 
some  other  time,  and  he  gives  me  various  anecdotes  of  what 
he  and  other  people  did  and  said.  He  thinks  aloud.  If  I 
seem  not  to  listen  he  presently  notices  it  and  will  come  up 
and  touch  me,  or  bend  over  and  look  up  into  my  face. ' ' 

"R.  [about  the  same  time]  is  hilariously  delighted  and 
excited  when  he  can  get  anyone  to  laugh  or  wonder  with 
him  at  his  pictures,  etc.  He  himself  always  shares  by  an- 
ticipation, and  exaggerates  the  feeling  he  expects  to  pro- 
duce. When  B.  was  calling,  R.,  with  his  usual  desire  to 
entertain  guests,  brought  out  his  pull-book,  in  which  pull- 
ing a  strip  of  pasteboard  transforms  the  picture.  When  he 
prepared  to  work  this  he  was  actually  shaking  with  eager- 
ness— apparently  in  anticipation  of  the  coming  surprise." 

"  I  watch  E.  and  R.  [four  and  a  half  years  old]  playing 
McGrinty  on  the  couch  and  guessing  what  card  will  turn 
up.  R.  is  in  a  state  of  intense  excitement  which  breaks  out 
in  boisterous  laughter  and  all  sorts  of  movements  of  the 
head  and  limbs.  He  is  full  of  an  emotion  which  has  very 
little  to  do  with  mere  curiosity  or  surprise  relating  to  the 
card." 

I  take  it  that  the  child  has  by  heredity  a  generous 
capacity  and  need  for  social  feeling,  rather  too  vague 
and  plastic  to  be  given  any  specific  name  like  love. 
It  is  not  so  much  any  particular  personal  emotion  or 
sentiment  as  the  undifferentiated  material  of  many  : 
perhaps  sociability  is  as  good  a  word  for  it  as  any. 

And  this  material,  like  all  other  instinct,  allies  it- 
self with  social  experience  to  form,  as  time  goes  on, 
a  growing  and  diversifying  body  of  personal  thought, 
in  which  the  phases  of  social  feeling  developed  cor- 
respond, in  some  measure,  to  the  complexity  of  life 

50 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

itself.  It  is  a  process  of  organization,  involving  pro- 
gressive differentiation  and  integration,  such  as  we 
see  everywhere  in  nature. 

In  children  and  in  simple-minded  adults,  kindly 
feeling  may  be  very  strong  and  yet  very  naive,  in- 
volving little  insight  into  the  emotional  states  of 
others.  A  child  who  is  extremely  sociable,  bubbling 
over  with  joy  in  companionship,  may  yet  show  a 
total  incomprehension  of  pain  and  a  scant  regard  for 
disapproval  and  punishment  that  does  not  take  the 
form  of  a  cessation  of  intercourse.  In  other  words, 
there  is  a  sociability  that  asks  little  from  others  ex- 
cept bodily  presence  and  an  occasional  sign  of  atten- 
tion, and  often  learns  to  supply  even  these  by  imag- 
ination. It  seems  nearly  or  quite  independent  of 
that  power  of  interpretation  which  is  the  starting- 
point  of  true  sympathy.  While  both  of  my  children 
were  extremely  sociable,  E.  was  not  at  all  sympa- 
thetic in  the  sense  of  having  quick  insight  into 
others'  states  of  feeling. 

Sociability  in  this  simple  form  is  an  innocent,  un- 
self-conscious  joy,  primary  and  unmoral,  like  all  sim- 
ple emotion.  It  may  shine  with  full  brightness  from 
the  faces  of  idiots  and  imbeciles,  where  it  sometimes 
alternates  with  fear,  rage,  or  lust.  A  visitor  to  an 
institution  where  large  numbers  of  these  classes  are 
collected  will  be  impressed,  as  I  have  been,  with  the 
fact  that  they  are  as  a  rule  amply  endowed  with  those 
kindly  impulses  which  some  appear  to  look  upon  as 
almost  the  sole  requisite  for  human  welfare.  It  is  a 

51 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

singular  and  moving  fact  that  there  is  a  class  of  cases, 
mostly  women,  I  think,  in  whom  kindly  emotion  is  so 
excitable  as  to  be  a  frequent  source  of  hysterical 
spasms,  so  that  it  has  to  be  discouraged  by  frowns 
and  apparent  harshness  on  the  part  of  those  in 
charge.  The  chief  difference  between  normal  people 
and  imbeciles  in  this  regard  is  that,  while  the  former 
have  more  or  less  of  this  simple  kindliness  in  them, 
social  emotion  is  also  elaborately  compounded  and 
worked  up  by  the  mind  into  an  indefinite  number  of 
complex  passions  and  sentiments,  corresponding  to 
the  relations  and  functions  of  an  intricate  life. 

When  left  to  themselves  children  continue  the  joys 
of  sociability  by  means  of  an  imaginary  playmate. 
Although  all  must  have  noticed  this  who  have  ob- 
served children  at  all,  only  close  and  constant  ob- 
servation will  enable  one  to  realize  the  extent  to 
which  it  is  carried  on.  It  is  not  an  occasional  prac- 
tice, but,  rather,  a  necessary  form  of  thought,  flowing 
from  a  life  in  which  personal  communication  is  the 
chief  interest  and  social  feeling  the  stream  in  which, 
like  boats  on  a  river,  most  other  feelings  float.  Some 
children  appear  to  live  in  personal  imaginations  al- 
most from  the  first  month ;  others  occupy  their 
minds  in  early  infancy  mostly  with  solitary  experi- 
ments upon  blocks,  cards,  and  other  impersonal  ob- 
jects, and  their  thoughts  are  doubtless  filled  with  the 
images  of  these.  But,  in  either  case,  after  a  child 
learns  to  talk  and  the  social  world  in  all  its  wonder 

52 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

and  provocation  opens  on  his  mind,  it  floods  his  im- 
agination so  that  all  his  thoughts  are  conversations. 
He  is  never  alone.  Sometimes  the  inaudible  inter- 
locutor is  recognizable  as  the  image  of  a  tangible 
playmate,  sometimes  he  appears  to  be  purely  imag- 
inary. Of  course  each  child  has  his  own  peculiari- 
ties. B.,  beginning  when  about  three  years  of  age, 
almost  invariably  talked  aloud  while  he  was  playing 
alone — which,  as  he  was  a  first  child,  was  very  often 
the  case.  Most  commonly  he  would  use  no  form  of 
address  but  "  you,"  and  perhaps  had  no  definite  per- 
son in  mind.  To  listen  to  him  was  like  hearing  one 
at  the  telephone ;  though  occasionally  he  would  give 
both  sides  of  the  conversation.  At  times  again  he 
would  be  calling  upon  some  real  name,  Esyllt  or 
Dorothy,  or  upon  "  Piggy,"  a  fanciful  person  of  his 
own  invention.  Every  thought  seemed  to  be  spoken 
out.  If  his  mother  called  him  he  would  say,  "  I've 
got  to  go  in  now."  Once  when  he  slipped  down  on 
the  floor  he  was  heard  to  say,  "  Did  you  tumble 
down?  No.  /did." 

The  main  point  to  note  here  is  that  these  conver- 
sations are  not  occasional  and  temporary  effusions  of 
the  imagination,  but  are  the  naive  expression  of  a 
socialization  of  the  mind  that  is  to  be  permanent 
and  to  underly  all  later  thinking.  The  imaginary 
dialogue  passes  beyond  the  thinking  aloud  of  little 
children  into  something  more  elaborate,  reticent,  and 
sophisticated ;  but  it  never  ceases.  Grown  people, 
like  children,  are  usually  unconscious  of  these  dia- 

53 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

logues ;  as  we  get  older  we  cease,  for  the  most  part, 
to  carry  them  on  out  loud,  and  some  of  us  practise 
a  good  deal  of  apparently  solitary  meditation  and  ex- 
periment. But,  speaking  broadly,  it  is  true  of  adults 
as  of  children,  that  the  mind  lives  in  perpetual  con- 
versation. It  is  one  of  those  things  that  we  seldom 
notice  just  because  they  are  so  familiar  and  involun- 
tary ;  but  we  can  perceive  it  if  we  try  to.  If  one 
suddenly  stops  and  takes  note  of  his  thoughts  at 
some  time  when  his  mind  has  been  running  free,  as 
when  he  is  busy  with  some  simple  mechanical  work, 
he  will  be  likely  to  find  them  taking  the  form  of 
vague  conversations.  This  is  particularly  true  when 
one  is  somewhat  excited  with  reference  to  a  social 
situation.  If  he  feels  under  accusation  or  suspicion 
in  any  way  he  will  probably  find  himself  making  a 
defence,  or  perhaps  a  confession,  to  an  imaginary 
hearer.  A  guilty  man  confesses  "  to  get  the  load  off 
his  mind ; "  that  is  to  say,  the  excitement  of  his  thought 
cannot  stop  there  but  extends  to  the  connected  im- 
pulses of  expression  and  creates  an  intense  need  to 
tell  somebody.  Impulsive  people  often  talk  out  loud 
when  excited,  either  "  to  themselves,"  as  we  say  when 
we  can  see  no  one  else  present,  or  to  anyone  whom 
they  can  get  to  listen.  Dreams  also  consist  very 
largely  of  imaginary  conversations ;  and,  with  some 
people  at  least,  the  mind  runs  in  dialogue  during  the 
half-waking  state  before  going  to  sleep.  There  are 
many  other  familiar  facts  that  bear  the  same  inter- 
pretation— such,  for  instance,  as  that  it  is  much 

54 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

easier  for  most  people  to  compose  in  the  form  of  let- 
ters or  dialogue  than  in  any  other  ;  so  that  literature 
of  this  kind  has  been  common  in  all  ages. 

Goethe,  in  giving  an  account  of  how  he  came  to 
write  "  Werther  "  as  a  series  of  letters,  discusses  the 
matter  with  his  usual  perspicuity,  and  lets  us  see 
how  habitually  conversational  was  his  way  of  think- 
ing. Speaking  of  himself  in  the  third  person,  he 
says :  "  Accustomed  to  pass  his  time  most  pleasantly 
in  society,  he  changed  even  solitary  thought  into  so- 
cial converse,  and  this  in  the  following  manner  :  He 
had  the  habit,  when  he  was  alone,  of  calling  before 
his  mind  any  person  of  his  acquaintance.  This  per- 
son he  entreated  to  sit  down,  walked  up  and  down 
by  him,  remained  standing  before  him,  and  dis- 
coursed with  him  on  the  subject  he  had  in  mind. 
To  this  the  person  answered  as  occasion  required,  or 
by  the  ordinary  gestures  signified  his  assent  or  dis- 
sent— in  which  every  man  has  something  peculiar  to 
himself.  The  speaker  then  continued  to  carry  out 
further  that  which  seemed  to  please  the  guest,  or  to 
condition  and  define  more  closely  that  of  which  he 
disapproved ;  and  finally  was  polite  enough  to  give 
up  his  own  notion.  .  .  .  How  nearly  such  a  dia- 
logue is  akin  to  a  written  correspondence  is  clear 
enough ;  only  in  the  latter  one  sees  returned  the 
confidence  one  has  bestowed,  while  in  the  former  one 
creates  for  himself  a  confidence  which  is  new,  ever- 
changing  and  unreturned."  *  "  Accustomed  to  pass 
*  Oxenford's  Translation,  vol.  i.,  p.  501. 
55 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

his  time  most  pleasantly  in  society,  he  changed  even 
solitary  thought  into  social  converse,"  is  not  only  a 
particular  but  a  general  truth,  more  or  less  applica- 
ble to  all  thought.  The  fact  is  that  language,  devel- 
oped by  the  race  through  personal  intercourse  and 
imparted  to  the  individual  in  the  same  way,  can 
never  be  dissociated  from  personal  intercourse  in  the 
raind ;  and  since  higher  thought  involves  language,  it 
is  always  a  kind  of  imaginary  conversation.  The 
word  and  the  interlocutor  are  correlative  ideas. 

The  impulse  to  communicate  is  not  so  much  a  re- 
sult of  thought  as  it  is  an  inseparable  part  of  it. 
They  are  like  root  and  branch,  two  phases  of  a  com- 
mon growth,  so  that  the  death  of  one  presently  in- 
volves that  of  the  other.  Psychologists  now  teach 
that  every  thought  involves  an  active  impulse  as 
part  of  its  very  nature ;  and  this  impulse,  with  refer- 
ence to  the  more  complex  and  socially  developed 
forms  of  thought,  takes  the  shape  of  a  need  to  talk, 
to  write,  and  so  on ;  and  if  none  of  these  is  practi- 
cable, it  expends  itself  in  a  wholly  imaginary  com- 
munication. 

Montaigne,  who  understood  human  nature  as  well, 

perhaps,  as  anyone  who  ever  lived,  remarks :  "  There 

is  no  pleasure  to  me  without  communication  :  there 

is  not  so  much  as  a  sprightly  thought  comes  into  my 

mind  that  it  does  not  grieve  me  to  have  produced 

alone,  and  that  I  have  no  one  to  tell  it  to."  *     And  it 

*  See  his  Essay  on  Vanity. 

56 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

was  doubtless  because  he  had  many  such  thoughts 
which  no  one  was  at  hand  to  appreciate,  that  he 
took  to  writing  essays.  The  uncomprehended  of  all 
times  and  peoples  have  kept  diaries  for  the  same  rea- 
son. So,  in  general,  a  true  creative  impulse  in  liter- 
ature or  art  is,  in  one  aspect,  an  expression  of  this 
simple,  childlike  need  to  think  aloud  or  to  some- 
body ;  to  define  and  vivify  thought  by  imparting  it 
to  an  imaginary  companion ;  by  developing  that 
communicative  element  which  belongs  to  its  very 
nature,  and  without  which  it  cannot  live  and  grow. 
Many  authors  have  confessed  that  they  always  think 
of  some  person  when  they  write,  and  I  am  inclined 
to  believe  that  this  is  always  more  or  less  definitely 
the  case,  though  the  writer  himself  may  not  be  aware 
of  it.  Emerson  somewhere  says  that  "  the  man  is 
but  half  himself ;  the  other  half  is  his  expression," 
and  this  is  literally  true.  The  man  comes  to  be 
through  some  sort  of  expression,  and  has  no  higher 
existence  apart  from  it ;  overt  or  imaginary  it  takes 
place  all  the  time. 

Men  apparently  solitary,  like  Thoreau,  are  often 
the  best  illustrations  of  the  inseparability  of  thought 
and  life  from  communication.  No  sympathetic  read- 
er of  his  works,  I  should  say,  can  fail  to  see  that  he 
took  to  the  woods  and  fields  not  because  he  lacked 
sociability,  but  precisely  because  his  sensibilities 
were  so  koen  that  he  needed  to  rest  and  protect 
them  by  a  peculiar  mode  of  life,  and  to  express  them 
by  the  indirect  and  considerate  method  of  literature. 

57 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

No  man  ever  labored  more  passionately  to  commu- 
nicate, to  give  and  receive  adequate  expression,  than 
he  did.  This  may  be  read  between  the  lines  in  all 
his  works,  and  is  recorded  in  his  diary.  "  I  would 
fain  communicate  the  wealth  of  my  life  to  men,  would 
really  give  them  what  is  most  precious  in  my  gift.  I 
would  secrete  pearls  with  the  shell-fish  and  lay  up 
honey  with  the  bees  for  them.  I  will  sift  the  sun- 
beams for  the  public  good.  I  know  no  riches  I 
would  keep  back.  I  have  no  private  good  unless  it 
be  my  peculiar  ability  to  serve  the  public.  This  is 
the  only  individual  property.  Each  one  may  thus 
be  innocently  rich.  I  enclose  and  foster  the  pearl 
till  it  is  grown.  I  wish  to  communicate  those  parts 
of  my  life  which  I  would  gladly  live  again."  *  This 
shows,  I  think,  a  just  notion  of  the  relation  between 
the  individual  and  society,  privacy  and  publicity. 
There  is,  in  fact,  a  great  deal  of  sound  sociology  in 
Thoreau. 

Since,  therefore,  the  need  to  impart  is  of  this  pri- 
mary and  essential  character,  we  ought  not  to  look 
upon  it  as  something  separable  from  and  additional 
to  the  need  to  think  or  to  be  ;  it  is  only  by  impart- 
ing that  one  is  enabled  to  think  or  to  be.  Every- 
one, in  proportion  to  his  natural  vigor,  necessarily 
strives  to  communicate  to  others  that  part  of  his  life 
which  he  is  trying  to  unfold  in  himself.  It  is  a 
matter  of  self-preservation,  because  without  expres- 
sion thought  cannot  live.  Imaginary  conversation — 
*  Early  Spring  in  Massachusetts,  p.  232. 
58 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

that  is,  conversation  carried  on  without  the  stimulus 
of  a  visible  and  audible  response — may  satisfy  the 
needs  of  the  mind  for  a  long  time.  There  is,  indeed, 
an  advantage  to  a  vigorously  constructive  and  yet  im- 
pressible imagination  in  restricting  communication ; 
because  in  this  way  ideas  are  enabled  to  have  a  clear- 
er and  more  independent  development  than  they 
could  have  if  continually  disturbed  by  criticism  or 
opposition.  Thus  artists,  men  of  letters,  and  pro- 
ductive minds  of  all  sorts  often  find  it  better  to  keep 
their  productions  to  themselves  until  they  are  fully 
matured.  But,  after  all,  the  response  must  come 
sooner  or  later  or  thought  itself  will  perish.  The 
imagination,  in  time,  loses  the  power  to  create  an  in- 
terlocutor who  is  not  corroborated  by  any  fresh  ex- 
perience. If  the  artist  finds  no  appreciator  for  his 
book  or  picture  he  will  scarcely  be  able  to  produce 
another. 

People  differ  much  in  the  vividness  of  their  imag- 
inative sociability.  The  more  simple,  concrete,  dra- 
matic, their  habit  of  mind  is,  the  more  their  think- 
ing is  carried  on  in  terms  of  actual  conversation  with 
a  visible  and  audible  interlocutor.  Women,  as  a  rule, 
probably  do  this  more  vividly  than  men,  the  unlet- 
tered more  vividly  than  those  trained  to  abstract 
thought,  and  the  sort  of  people  we  call  emotional 
more  vividly  than  the  impassive.  Moreover,  the  in- 
terlocutor is  a  very  mutable  person,  and  is  likely  to 
resemble  the  last  strong  character  we  have  been  in 
contact  with.  I  have  noticed,  for  instance,  that 

59 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

when  I  take  up  a  book  after  a  person  of  decided  and 
interesting  character  has  been  talking  with  me  I  am 
likely  to  hear  the  words  of  the  book  in  his  voice. 
The  same  is  true  of  opinions,  moral  standards,  and 
the  like,  as  well  as  of  physical  traits.  In  short,  the 
interlocutor,  who  is  half  of  all  thought  and  life,  is 
drawn  from  the  accessible  environment. 

It  is  worth  noting  here  that  there  is  no  separation 
between  real  and  imaginary  persons ;  indeed,  to  be 
imagined  is  to  become  real,  in  a  social  sense,  as  I 
shall  presently  point  out.  An  invisible  person  may 
easily  be  more  real  to  an  imaginative  mind  than  a 
visible  one  ;  sensible  presence  is  not  necessarily  a 
matter  of  the  first  importance.  A  person  can  be  real 
to  us  only  in  the  degree  in  which  we  imagine  an  inner 
life  which  exists  in  us,  for  the  time  being,  and  which 
we  refer  to  him.  The  sensible  presence  is  important 
chiefly  in  stimulating  us  to  do  this.  All  real  per- 
sons are  imaginary  in  this  sense.  If,  however,  we 
use  imaginary  in  the  sense  of  illusory,  an  imagination 
not  corresponding  to  fact,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  visible 
presence  is  no  bar  to  illusion.  Thus  I  meet  a  stran- 
ger on  the  steamboat  who  corners  me  and  tells  me 
his  private  history.  I  care  nothing  for  it,  and  he 
half  knows  that  I  do  not ;  he  uses  me  only  as  a  lay 
figure  to  sustain  the  agreeable  illusion  of  sympathy, 
and  is  talking  to  an  imaginary  companion  quite  as 
he  might  if  I  were  elsewhere.  So  likewise  good 
manners  are  largely  a  tribute  to  imaginary  compan- 
ionship, a  make-believe  of  sympathy  which  it  is 

60 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEESONAL  IDEAS 

agreeable  to  accept  as  real,  though  we  may  know, 
when  we  think,  that  it  is  not.  To  conceive  a  kindly 
and  approving  companion  is  something  that  one  in- 
voluntarily tries  to  do,  in  accordance  with  that  in- 
stinctive hedonizing  inseparable  from  all  wholesome 
mental  processes,  and  to  assist  in  this  by  at  least  a 
seeming  of  friendly  appreciation  is  properly  regarded 
as  a  part  of  good  breeding.  To  be  always  sincere 
would  be  brutally  to  destroy  this  pleasant  and  most- 
ly harmless  figment  of  the  imagination. 

Thus  the  imaginary  companionship  which  a  child 
of  three  or  four  years  so  naively  creates  and  expresses, 
is  something  elementary  and  almost  omnipresent  in 
the  thought  of  a  normal  person.  In  fact,  thought 
and  personal  intercourse  may  be  regarded  as  merely 
aspects  of  the  same  thing :  we  call  it  personal  inter- 
course when  the  suggestions  that  keep  it  going  are 
received  through  faces  or  other  symbols  present  to 
the  senses ;  reflection  when  the  personal  suggestions 
come  through  memory  and  are  more  elaborately 
worked  over  in  thought.  But  both  are  mental,  both 
are  personal.  Personal  images,  as  they  are  connected 
with  nearly  all  our  higher  thought  in  its  inception, 
remain  inseparable  from  it  in  memory.  The  mind  is 
not  a  hermit's  cell,  but  a  place  of  hospitality  and 
intercourse.  We  have  no  higher  life  that  is  really 
apart  from  other  people.  It  is  by  imagining  them 
that  our  personality  is  built  up ;  to  be  without  the 
power  of  imagining  them  is  to  be  a  low-grade  idiot ; 
and  in  the  measure  that  a  mind  is  lacking  in  this 

61 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

power  it  is  degenerate.  Apart  from  this  mental  so- 
ciety there  is  no  wisdom,  no  power,  justice,  or  right, 
no  higher  existence  at  all.  The  life  of  the  mind  is 
essentially  a  life  of  intercourse. 

Let  us  now  consider  somewhat  more  carefully  the 
way  in  which  ideas  of  people  grow  up  in  the  mind, 
and  try  to  make  out,  as  nearly  as  we  can,  their  real 
nature  and  significance. 

The  studies  through  which  the  child  learns,  in  time, 
to  interpret  personal  expression  are  very  early  begun. 
On  her  twelfth  day  M.  was  observed  to  get  her  eyes 
upon  her  mother's  face ;  and  after  gazing  for  some 
time  at  it  she  seemed  attracted  to  the  eyes,  into  which 
she  looked  quite  steadily.  From  the  end  of  the  first 
month  this  face  study  was  very  frequent  and  long- 
continued.  Doubtless  anyone  who  notices  infants 
could  multiply  indefinitely  observations  like  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"  M. ,  in  her  eighth  week,  lies  in  her  mother's  lap  gazing 
up  at  her  face  with  a  frown  of  fixed  and  anxious  atten- 
tion. Evidently  the  play  of  the  eyes  and  lips,  the  flashing 
of  the  teeth,  and  the  wrinkles  of  expression  are  the  object 
of  her  earnest  study.  So  also  the  coaxing  noises  which  are 
made  to  please  her." 

"  She  now  [four  months  and  twenty-one  days  old]  seems 
to  fix  her  attention  almost  entirely  upon  the  eyes,  and  will 
stare  at  them  for  a  minute  or  more  with  the  most  intent 
expression." 

The  eye  seems  to  receive  most  notice.  As  Perez 
says :  "  The  eye  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and 

62 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEKSONAL  IDEAS 

attractive  of  objects ;  the  vivacity  of  the  pupil  set  in 
its  oval  background  of  white,  its  sparkles,  its  darts 
of  light,  its  tender  looks,  its  liquid  depths,  attract 
and  fascinate  a  young  child.  .  .  ."  *  The  mouth 
also  gets  much  attention,  especially  when  in  move- 
ment ;  I  have  sometimes  noticed  a  child  who  is  look- 
ing into  the  eyes  turn  from  them  to  the  mouth  when 
the  person  commences  to  talk  :  the  flashing  of  the 
teeth  then  adds  to  its  interest.  The  voice  is  also  the 
object  of  close  observation.  The  intentness  with 
which  a  child  listens  to  it,  the  quickness  with  which 
he  learns  to  distinguish  different  voices  and  different 
inflections  of  the  same  voice,  and  the  fact  that  vocal 
imitation  precedes  other  sorts,  all  show  this.  It 
cannot  fail  to  strike  the  observer  that  observation 
of  these  traits  is  not  merely  casual,  but  a  strenuous 
study,  often  accompanied  by  a  frown  of  earnest  atten- 
tion. The  mind  is  evidently  aroused,  something  im- 
portant is  going  on,  something  conscious,  voluntary, 
eager.  It  would  seem  likely  that  this  something  is 
the  storing  up,  arrangement,  and  interpretation  of 
those  images  of  expression  which  remain  through- 
out life  the  starting-point  of  personal  imaginations. 

The  wrinkles  about  the  eyes  and  mouth,  which  are 
perhaps  the  most  expressive  parts  of  the  countenance, 
would  not  be  so  noticeable  at  first  as  the  eyes,  the  lips, 
and  the  teeth,  but  they  are  always  in  the  field  of 
vision,  and  in  time  their  special  significance  as  a  seat 
of  expression  comes  to  be  noticed  and  studied.  M. 

*  The  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  77. 
63 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

appeared  to  understand  a  smile  sufficiently  to  be 
pleased  by  it  about  the  end  of  the  tenth  month.  The 
first  unequivocal  case  of  smiling  in  response  to  a 
smile  was  noticed  on  the  twenty-sixth  day  of  this 
mouth.  Even  at  this  age  smiling  is  not  imitative  in 
the  sense  of  being  a  voluntary  repetition  of  the  other's 
action,  but  appears  to  be  merely  an  involuntary  ex- 
pression of  pleasure.  Facial  expression  is  one  of  the 
later  things  to  be  imitated,  for  the  reason,  apparently, 
that  the  little  child  cannot  be  aware  of  the  expression 
of  his  own  countenance  as  he  can  hear  his  own  voice 
or  see  his  own  hands ;  and  therefore  does  not  so  soon 
learn  to  control  it  and  to  make  it  a  means  of  voluntary 
imitation.  He  learns  this  only  when  he  comes  to 
study  his  features  in  the  looking-glass.  This  children 
do  as  early  as  the  second  year,  when  they  may  be 
observed  experimenting  before  the  mirror  with  all 
sorts  of  gestures  and  grimaces. 

The  interpretation  of  a  smile,  or  of  any  sort  of  facial 
expression,  is  apparently  learned  much  as  other  things 
are.  By  constant  study  of  the  face  from  the  first 
month  the  child  comes,  in  time,  to  associate  the 
wrinkles  that  form  a  smile  with  pleasant  experiences 
— fondling,  coaxing,  offering  of  playthings  or  of  the 
bottle,  and  so  on.  Thus  the  smile  comes  to  be  rec- 
ognized as  a  harbinger  of  pleasure,  and  so  is  greeted 
with  a  smile.  Its  absence,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
associated  with  inattention  and  indifference.  Toward 
the  end  of  the  fifth  month  M.,  on  one  occasion,  seemed 
to  notice  the  change  from  a  smile  to  a  frown,  and 

64 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEKSONAL  IDEAS 

stopped  smiling  herself.  However,  a  number  of 
observations  taken  in  the  tenth  month  show  that 
even  then  it  was  doubtful  whether  she  could  be  made 
to  smile  merely  by  seeing  someone  else  do  it ;  and, 
as  I  say,  the  first  unequivocal  case  was  noticed  toward 
the  end  of  this  month. 

Such  evidence  as  we  have  from  the  direct  observa- 
tion of  children  does  not  seem  to  me  to  substantiate 
the  opinion  that  we  have  a  definite  instinctive  sen- 
sibility to  facial  expression.  Whatever  hereditary 
element  there  is  I  imagine  to  be  very  vague,  and 
incapable  of  producing  definite  phenomena  without 
the  aid  of  experience.  I  experimented  upon  my  own 
and  some  other  children  with  frowns,  attempts  at 
ferocity,  and  pictures  of  faces,  as  well  as  with  smiles — 
in  order  to  elicit  instinctive  apprehension  of  expres- 
sion, but  during  the  first  year  these  phenomena 
seemed  to  produce  no  definite  effect.  At  about 
fifteen  months  M.  appeared  to  be  dismayed  by  a 
savage  expression  assumed  while  playing  with  her, 
and  at  about  the  same  period  became  very  sensitive  to 
frowns.  The  impression  left  upon  me  was  that  after 
a  child  learns  to  expect  a  smiling  face  as  the  concomi- 
tant of  kindness,  he  is  puzzled,  troubled,  or  startled 
when  it  is  taken  away,  and  moreover  learns  by  experi- 
ence that  frowns  and  gravity  mean  disapproval  and 
opposition.  I  imagine  that  children  fail  to  understand 
any  facial  expression  that  is  quite  new  to  them.  An 
unfamiliar  look,  an  expression  of  ferocity  for  example, 
may  excite  vague  alarm  simply  because  it  is  strange ; 

65 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

or,  as  is  very  likely  with  children  used  to  kind  treat- 
ment, this  or  any  other  contortion  of  the  face  may  be 
welcomed  with  a  laugh  on  the  assumption  that  it  is 
some  new  kind  of  play.  I  feel  sure  that  observa- 
tion will  dissipate  the  notion  of  any  definite  in- 
stinctive capacity  to  interpret  the  countenance. 

I  might  also  mention,  as  having  some  bearing  upon 
this  question  of  definite  hereditary  ideas,  that  my 
children  did  not  show  that  instinctive  fear  of  animals 
that  some  believe  to  be  implanted  in  us.  R.,  the 
elder,  until  about  three  years  of  age,  delighted  in 
animals,  and  when  taken  to  the  menagerie  regarded 
the  lions  and  tigers  with  the  calmest  interest ;  but 
later,  apparently  as  a  result  of  rude  treatment  by  a 
puppy,  became  exceedingly  timid.  M.  has  never,  so 
far  as  I  know,  shown  any  fear  of  any  animal. 

As  regards  sounds,  there  is  no  doubt  of  a  vague 
instinctive  susceptibility,  at  least  to  what  is  harsh — 
sharp,  or  plaintive.  Children  less  than  a  month  old 
will  show  pain  at  such  sounds.  A  harsh  cry,  or  a 
sharp  sound  like  that  of  a  tin  horn,  will  sometimes 
make  them  draw  down  the  mouth  and  cry  even  dur- 
ing the  first  week. 

Darwin  records  that  in  one  of  his  children  sym- 
pathy "  was  clearly  shown  at  six  months  and  eleven 
days  by  his  melancholy  face,  with  the  corners  of  his 
mouth  well  depressed,  when  his  nurse  pretended  to 
cry."  *  Such  manifestations  are  probably  caused 
rather  by  the  plaintive  voice  than  by  facial  expres- 

*See  his  Biographical  Sketch  of  an  Infant,  Mind,  vol.  ii.,  p.  289. 
66 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

sion  ;  at  any  rate,  I  have  never  been  able  to  produce 
them  by  the  latter  alone. 

Some  believe  that  young  children  have  an  intuition 
of  personal  character  quicker  and  more  trustworthy 
than  that  of  grown  people.  If  this  were  so  it  would 
be  a  strong  argument  in  favor  of  the  existence  of  a 
congenital  instinct  which  does  not  need  experience 
and  is  impaired  by  it.  My  own  belief  is  that  close 
observation  of  children  under  two  years  of  age  will 
lead  to  the  conclusion  that  personal  impressions  are 
developed  by  experience.  Yet  it  is  possibly  true 
that  children  three  years  old  or  more  are  sometimes 
quicker  and  more  acute  judges  of  some  traits,  such 
as  sincerity  and  good  will,  than  grown  people.  In  so 
far  as  it  is  a  fact  it  may  perhaps  be  explained  in  this 
way.  The  faces  that  children  see  and  study  are 
mostly  full  of  the  expression  of  love  and  truth. 
Nothing  like  it  occurs  in  later  life,  even  to  the  most 
fortunate.  These  images,  we  may  believe,  give  rise 
in  the  child's  mind  to  a  more  or  less  definite  ideal  of 
what  a  true  and  kindly  face  should  be,  and  this  ideal 
he  uses  with  great  effect  in  detecting  what  falls  short 
of  it.  He  sees  that  there  is  something  wrong  with 
the  false  smile  ;  it  does  not  fit  the  image  in  his  mind ; 
some  lines  are  not  there,  others  are  exaggerated. 
He  does  not  understand  what  coldness  and  insin- 
cerity are,  but  their  expression  puzzles  and  alarms 
him,  merely  because  it  is  not  what  he  is  used  to. 
The  adult  loses  this  clear,  simple  ideal  of  love  and 
truth,  and  the  sharp  judgment  that  flows  from  it. 

67 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

His  perception  becomes  somewhat  vulgarized  by  a 
flood  of  miscellaneous  experience,  and  he  sacrifices 
childish  spontaneity  to  wider  range  and  more  com- 
plex insight,  valuing  and  studying  many  traits  of 
which  the  child  knows  nothing.  It  will  not  be  seri- 
ously maintained  that,  on  the  whole,  we  know  people 
better  when  we  are  children  than  we  do  later. 

I  put  forward  these  scanty  observations  for  what 
little  they  may  be  worth,  and  not  as  disproving  the 
existence  of  special  instincts  in  which  Darwin  and 
other  great  observers  have  believed.  I  do  not  main- 
tain that  there  is  no  hereditary  aptitude  to  interpret 
facial  expression — there  must  be  some  sort  of  an  in 
stinctive  basis  to  start  from — but  I  think  that  it  de- 
velops gradually  and  in  indistinguishable  conjunction 
with  knowledge  gained  by  experience. 

Apparently,  then,  voice,  facial  expression,  gesture, 
and  the  like,  which  later  become  the  vehicle  of  per- 
sonal impressions  and  the  sensible  basis  of  sympathy, 
are  attractive  at  first  chiefly  for  their  sensuous  variety 
and  vividness,  very  much  as  other  bright,  moving, 
sounding  things  are  attractive ;  and  the  interpreta- 
tion of  them  comes  gradually  by  the  inter  working 
of  instinct  and  observation.  This  interpretation  is 
nothing  other  than  the  growth,  in  connection  with 
these  sensuous  experiences,  of  a  system  of  ideas  that 
we  associate  with  them.  The  interpretation  of  an 
angry  look,  for  instance,  consists  in  the  expectation  of 
angry  words  and  acts,  in  feelings  of  resentment  or 
fear,  and  so  on ;  in  short,  it  is  our  whole  mental  reac- 

68 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

tion  to  this  sign.  It  may  consist  in  part  of  sym- 
pathetic states  of  mind,  that  is  in  states  of  mind  that 
we  suppose  the  other  to  experience  also;  but  it  is 
not  confined  to  such.  These  ideas  that  enrich  the 
meaning  of  the  symbol — the  resentment  or  fear,  for 
instance — have  all,  no  doubt,  their  roots  in  instinct ; 
we  are  born  with  the  crude  raw  material  of  such 
feelings.  And  it  is  precisely  in  the  act  of  com- 
munication, in  social  contact  of  some  sort,  that  this 
material  grows,  that  it  gets  the  impulses  that  give  it 
further  definition,  refinement,  organization.  It  is  by 
intercourse  with  others  that  we  expand  our  inner  ex- 
perience. In  other  words,  and  this  is  the  point  of  the 
matter,  the  personal  idea  consists  at  first  and  in  all 
later  development,  of  a  sensuous  element  or  symbol 
with  which  is  connected  a  more  or  less  complex  body 
of  thought  and  sentiment ;  the  whole  social  in  genesis, 
formed  by  a  series  of  communications. 

What  do  we  think  of  when  we  think  of  a  person  ? 
Is  not  the  nucleus  of  the  thought  an  image  of  the 
sort  just  mentioned,  some  ghost  of  characteristic  ex- 
pression ?  It  may  be  a  vague  memory  of  lines  around 
the  mouth  and  eyes,  or  of  other  lines  indicating  pose, 
carriage,  or  gesture ;  or  it  may  be  an  echo  of  some 
tone  or  inflection  of  the  voice.  I  am  unable,  per- 
haps, to  call  up  any  distinct  outline  of  the  features 
of  my  best  friend,  of  my  own  mother,  or  my  child ; 
but  I  can  see  a  smile,  a  turn  of  the  eyelid,  a  way  of 
standing  or  sitting,  indistinct  and  flitting  glimpses, 

69 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

but  potent  to  call  up  those  past  states  of  feeling  of 
which  personal  memories  are  chiefly  formed.  The 
most  real  thing  in  physical  presence  is  not  height, 
nor  breadth,  nor  the  shape  of  the  nose  or  forehead, 
nor  that  of  any  other  comparatively  immobile  part  of 
the  body,  but  it  is  something  in  the  plastic,  expres- 
sive features :  these  are  noticed  and  remembered  be- 
cause they  tell  us  what  we  most  care  to  know. 

The  judgment  of  personal  character  seems  to  take 
place  in  much  the  same  way.  We  estimate  a  man,  I 
think,  by  imagining  what  he  would  do  in  various  situ- 
ations. Experience  supplies  us  with  an  almost  in- 
finite variety  of  images  of  men  in  action,  that  is  of  im- 
pressions of  faces,  tones,  and  the  like,  accompanied 
by  certain  other  elements  making  up  a  situation. 
When  we  wish  to  judge  a  new  face,  voice,  and  form, 
we  unconsciously  ask  ourselves  where  they  would  fit ; 
we  try  them  in  various  situations,  and  if  they  fit,  if 
we  can  think  of  them  as  doing  the  things  without  in- 
congruity, we  conclude  that  we  have  that  kind  of  a 
man  to  deal  with.  If  I  can  imagine  a  man  intimi- 
dated, I  do  not  respect  him ;  if  I  can  imagine  him 
lying,  I  do  not  trust  him ;  if  I  can  see  him  receiv- 
ing, comprehending,  resisting  men  and  disposing 
them  in  accordance  with  his  own  plans,  I  ascribe  ex- 
ecutive ability  to  him ;  if  I  can  think  of  him  in  his 
study  patiently  working  out  occult  problems,  I  judge 
him  to  be  a  scholar ;  and  so  on.  The  symbol  before 
us  reminds  us  of  some  other  symbol  resembling  it, 
and  this  brings  with  it  a  whole  group  of  ideas  which 

70 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

constitutes    our    personal    impression   of    the    new 
man.* 

The  power  to  make  these  judgments  is  intuitive, 
imaginative,  not  arrived  at  by  ratiocination,  but  it  is 
dependent  upon  experience.  I  have  no  belief  in  the 
theory,  which  I  have  seen  suggested,  that  we  uncon- 
sciously imitate  other  people's  expression,  and  then 
judge  of  their  character  by  noting  how  we  feel  when  we 
look  like  them.  The  men  of  uncommon  insight  into 
character  are  usually  somewhat  impassive  in  counte- 
nance and  not  given  to  facial  imitation.  Most  of  us 
become  to  some  extent  judges  of  the  character  of  dogs, 
so  that  we  can  tell  by  the  tone  of  a  dog's  bark  whether 
he  is  a  biting  dog  or  only  a  barking  dog.  Surely  im- 
itation can  have  nothing  to  do  with  this ;  we  do  not 
imitate  the  dog's  bark  to  learn  whether  he  is  serious 
or  not ;  we  observe,  remember,  and  imagine ;  and  it 
seems  to  me  that  we  judge  people  in  much  the  same 
way. 

These  visible  and  audible  signs  of  personality,  these 
lines  and  tones  whose  meaning  is  impressed  upon  us 
by  the  intense  and  constant  observation  of  our  child- 
hood, are  also  a  chief  basis  of  the  communication  of 
impressions  in  art  and  literature. 

This  is  evidently  the  case  in  those  arts  which  imi- 
tate the  human  face  and  figure.  Painters  and  illus- 

*  A  good  way  to  interpret  a  man's  face  is  to  ask  oneself  how  he 
would  look  saying  "  I  "  in  an  emphatic  manner.  This  seems  to 
help  the  imagination  in  grasping  what  is  most  essential  and  charac- 
teristic in  him. 

71 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trators  give  the  most  minute  study  to  facial  expres- 
sion, and  suggest  various  sentiments  by  bits  of  light 
and  shade  so  subtle  that  the  uninitiated  cannot  see 
what  or  where  they  are,  although  their  effect  is  every- 
thing as  regards  the  depiction  of  personality.  It  is 
the  failure  to  reproduce  them  that  makes  the  empti- 
ness of  nearly  all  copies  of  famous  painting  or  sculp- 
ture that  represents  the  face.  Perhaps  not  one  person 
in  a  thousand,  comparing  the  "  Mona  Lisa "  or  the 
"Beatrice  Cenci"  with  one  of  the  mediocre  copies 
generally  standing  near  them,  can  point  out  where  the 
painter  of  the  latter  has  gone  amiss  ;  yet  the  dif- 
ference is  like  that  between  life  and  a  wax  image. 
The  chief  fame  of  some  painters  rests  upon  their 
power  to  portray  and  suggest  certain  rare  kinds  of 
feeling.  Thus  the  people  of  Fra  Angelico  express  to 
the  eye  the  higher  love,  described  in  words  by  St. 
Paul  and  Thomas  a  Kempis.  It  is  a  distinctly  hu- 
man and  social  sentiment ;  his  persons  are  nearly 
always  in  pairs,  and,  in  his  Paradise  for  instance, 
almost  every  face  among  the  blest  is  directed  in  rap- 
ture toward  some  other  face.  Other  painters,  as 
Botticelli  and  Perugino — alike  in  this  respect  though 
not  in  most — depict  a  more  detached  sort  of  senti- 
ment; and  their  people  look  out  of  the  picture  in 
isolated  ecstasy  or  meditation. 

Sculpture  appeals  more  to  reminiscence  of  attitude, 
facial  expression  being  somewhat  subordinate,  though 
here  also  the  difference  between  originals  and  copies 
is  largely  in  the  lines  of  the  eyes  and  mouth,  too  deli- 

72 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

cate  to  be  reproduced  by  the  mechanical  instruments 
which  copy  broader  outlines  quite  exactly. 

As  to  literature,  it  is  enough  to  recall  the  fact  that 
words  allusive  to  traits  of  facial  expression,  and  espe- 
cially to  the  eye,  are  the  immemorial  and  chosen 
means  of  suggesting  personality.*  To  poetry,  which 
seeks  the  sensuous  nucleus  of  thought,  the  eye  is  very 
generally  the  person  ;  as  when  Shakespeare  says  : 

"When  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's  eyes, 
I  all  alone  be  weep  my  outcast  state    .     .     ." 

or  Milton : 

"Thy  rapt  soul  sitting  in  thine  eyes." 

Poetry,  however,  usually  refrains  from  minute 
description  of  expression,  a  thing  impossible  in  words, 
and  strikes  for  a  vivid,  if  inexact,  impression,  by  the 
use  of  such  phrases  as  "  a  fiery  eye,"  "  a  liquid  eye," 
and  "  The  poet's  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling."  f 

We  also  get  from  every  art  a  personal  impression 
that  does  not  come  from  the  imitation  of  features  and 
tones,  nor  from  a  description  of  these  in  words,  but  is 
the  personality  of  the  author  himself,  subtly  commu- 
nicated by  something  that  we  interpret  as  signs  of  his 
state  of  mind.  When  one  reads  Motley's  histories  he 
gets  a  personal  impression  not  only  of  the  Prince 

*  Only  four  words — "heart,"  "love,"  "man,"  "world" — take 
up  more  space  in  the  index  of  "  Familiar  Quotations  "  than  "  eye." 

f  On  the  fear  of  (imaginary)  eyes  see  G.  Stanley  Hall's  study  of 
Fear  in  The  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  vol.  8,  p.  147. 

73 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  Orange  or  Alexander  of  Parina,  but  also  of  Mr. 
Motley ;  and  the  same  is  true  or  may  be  true  of 
any  work  of  art,  however  "  objective  "  it  may  be. 
What  we  call  style,  when  we  say  "  The  style  is 
the  man,"  is  the  equivalent,  in  the  artist's  way  of 
doing  things,  of  those  visible  and  audible  traits  of 
the  form  and  voice  by  which  we  judge  people  who 
are  bodily  present.*  "  Every  work  of  genius,"  says 
John  Burroughs,  "has  its  own  physiognomy— sad, 
cheerful,  frowning,  yearning,  determined,  medita- 
tive." Just  as  we  are  glad  of  the  presence  of  cer- 
tain forms  and  faces,  because  of  the  mood  they  put 
us  in,  so  we  are  glad  of  the  physiognomy  of  cer- 
tain writers  in  their  books,  quite  apart  from  the  in- 
tellectual content  of  what  they  say ;  and  this  is  the 
subtlest,  most  durable,  most  indispensable  charm  of 
all.  Every  lover  of  books  has  authors  whom  he  reads 
over  and  over  again,  whom  he  cares  for  as  persons  and 
not  as  sources  of  information,  who  are  more  to  him, 
possibly,  than  any  person  he  sees.  He  continually 
returns  to  the  cherished  companion  and  feeds  eagerly 
upon  his  thought.  It  is  because  there  is  something 
in  the  book  which  he  needs,  which  awakens  and 

*  Two  apparently  opposite  views  are  current  as  to  what  style  is. 
One  regards  it  as  the  distinctive  or  characteristic  in  expression, 
that  which  marks  off  a  writer  or  other  artist  from  all  the  rest ;  ac- 
cording to  the  other,  style  is  mastery  over  the  common  medium  of 
expression,  as  language  or  the  technique  of  painting  or  sculpt- 
ure. These  are  not  so  inconsistent  as  they  seem.  Good  style  is 
both ;  that  is,  a  significant  personality  expressed  in  a  workmanlike 
manner. 

74 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEKSONAL  IDEAS 

directs  trains  of  thought  that  lead  him  where  he  likes 
to  be  led.  The  thing  that  does  this  is  something  per- 
sonal and  hard  to  define ;  it  is  in  the  words  and  yet 
not  in  any  definite  information  that  they  convey.  It 
is  rather  an  attitude,  a  way  of  feeling,  communicated 
by  a  style  faithful  to  the  writer's  mind.  Some  people 
find  pleasure  and  profit,  for  example,  in  perusing 
even  the  somewhat  obscure  and  little  inspired  por- 
tions of  Goethe's  writings,  like  the  "  Campaigns  in 
France  " ;  it  would  perhaps  be  impossible  to  tell  why, 
further  than  by  saying  that  they  get  the  feeling  of 
something  calm,  free  and  onward  which  is  Goethe 
himself,  and  not  to  be  had  elsewhere. 

And  so  anyone  who  practises  literary  composition, 
even  of  a  pedestrian  sort,  will  find  at  least  one  re- 
ward for  his  pains  in  a  growing  insight  into  the  per- 
sonality of  great  writers.  He  will  come  to  feel  that 
such  a  word  was  chosen  or  such  a  sentence  framed  in 
just  that  way,  under  the  influence  of  such  a  purpose 
or  sentiment,  and  by  putting  these  impressions  to- 
gether, will  presently  arrive  at  some  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  any  author  whose  character  and 
aims  are  at  all  congenial  with  his  own. 

We  feel  this  more  in  literature  than  in  any  other 
art,  and  more  in  prose  of  an  intimate  sort  than  in  any 
other  kind  of  literature.  The  reason  appears  to  be 
that  writing,  particularly  writing  of  a  familiar  kind, 
like  letters  and  autobiographies,  is  something  which 
we  all  practise  in  one  way  or  another,  and  which 
we  can,  therefore,  interpret;  while  the  methods  of 

75 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

other  arts  are  beyond  our  imaginations.  It  is  easy 
to  share  the  spirit  of  Charles  Lamb  writing  his  Let- 
ters, or  of  Montaigne  dictating  his  Essays,  or  of 
Thackeray  discoursing  in  the  first  person  about  his 
characters ;  because  they  merely  did  what  all  of  us 
do,  only  did  it  better.  On  the  other  hand,  Michel- 
angelo, or  Wagner,  or  Shakespeare — except  in  his 
sonnets — remains  for  most  of  us  personally  remote 
and  inconceivable.  But  a  painter,  or  a  composer,  or 
a  sculptor,  or  a  poet,  will  always  get  an  impression  of 
personality,  of  style,  from  another  artist  of  the  same 
sort,  because  his  experience  enables  him  to  feel  the 
subtle  indications  of  mood  and  method.  Mr.  Frith, 
the  painter,  says  in  his  autobiography  that  a  picture 
"  will  betray  the  real  character  of  its  author ;  who,  in 
the  unconscious  development  of  his  peculiarities, 
constantly  presents  to  the  initiated  signs  by  which  an 
infallible  judgment  may  be  pronounced  on  the  paint- 
er's mind  and  character."  *  In  fact,  it  is  true  of  any 
earnest  career  that  a  man  expresses  his  character  in 
his  work,  and  that  another  man  of  similar  aims  can 
read  what  he  expresses.  We  see  in  General  Grant's 
Memoirs,  how  an  able  commander  feels  the  person- 
ality of  an  opponent  in  the  movements  of  his  armies, 
imagines  what  he  will  do  in  various  exigencies,  and 
deals  with  him  accordingly. 

These  personal  impressions  of  a  writer  or  other 
artist  may  or  may  not  be  accompanied  by  a  vague 
imagination  of  his  visible  appearance.  Some  per- 

*  P.  493. 

76 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEKSONAL  IDEAS 

sons  have  so  strong  a  need  to  think  in  connection 
with  visual  images  that  they  seem  to  form  no  notion 
of  personality  without  involuntarily  imagining  what 
the  person  looks  like ;  while  others  can  have  a  stroog 
impression  of  feeling  and  purpose  that  seems  not  to 
be  accompanied  by  any  visual  picture.  There  can 
be  no  doubt,  however,  that  sensible  images  of  the 
face,  voice,  etc.,  usually  go  with  personal  ideas.  Our 
earliest  personal  conceptions  grow  up  about  such 
images ;  and  they  always  remain  for  most  of  us  the 
principal  means  of  getting  hold  of  other  people. 
Naturally,  they  have  about  the  same  relative  place 
in  memory  and  imagination  as  they  do  in  observa- 
tion. Probably,  if  we  could  get  to  the  bottom  of 
the  matter,  it  would  be  found  that  our  impres- 
sion of  a  writer  is  always  accompanied  by  some 
idea  of  his  sensible  appearance,  is  always  associated 
with  a  physiognomy,  even  when  we  are  not  aware  of 
it.  Can  anyone,  for  example,  read  Macaulay  and 
think  of  a  soft  and  delicately  inflected  voice?  I 
imagine  not :  these  periods  must  be  connected  with 
a  sonorous  and  somewhat  mechanical  utterance  ;  the 
sort  of  person  that  speaks  softly  and  with  delicate 
inflections  would  have  written  otherwise.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  reading  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  it  is 
impossible,  I  should  say,  not  to  get  the  impression  of 
a  sensitive  and  flexible  speech.  Such  impressions 
are  mostly  vague  and  may  be  incorrect,  but  for  sym- 
pathetic readers  they  exist  and  constitute  a  real, 
though  subtle,  physiognomy. 

77 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Not  only  the  idea  of  particular  persons  but  that 
of  social  groups  seems  to  have  a  sensible  basis  in 
these  ghosts  of  expression.  The  sentiment  by  which 
one's  family,  club,  college,  state  or  country  is  real- 
ized in  his  mind  is  stimulated  by  vague  images, 
largely  personal.  Thus  the  spirit  of  a  college  frater- 
nity seems  to  come  back  to  me  through  a  memory  of 
the  old  rooms  and  of  the  faces  of  friends.  The  idea 
of  country  is  a  rich  and  various  one  and  has  con- 
nected with  it  many  sensuous  symbols — such  as 
flags,  music,  and  the  rhythm  of  patriotic  poetry — 
that  are  not  directly  personal;  but  it  is  chiefly  an 
idea  of  personal  traits  that  we  share  and  like,  as  set 
over  against  others  that  are  different  and  repugnant. 
We  think  of  America  as  the  land  of  freedom,  sim- 
plicity, cordiality,  equality,  and  so  on,  in  antithesis 
to  other  countries  which  we  suppose  to  be  otherwise — 
and  we  think  of  these  traits  by  imagining  the  people 
that  embody  them.  For  countless  school  children 
patriotism  begins  in  sympathy  with  our  forefathers 
in  resistance  to  the  hateful  oppression  and  arrogance 
of  the  British,  and  this  fact  of  early  training  largely 
accounts  for  the  perennial  popularity  of  the  anti- 
British  side  in  international  questions.  Where  the 
country  has  a  permanent  ruler  to  typify  it  his  image 
is  doubtless  a  chief  element  in  the  patriotic  idea. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  impulse  which  we  feel  to  per- 
sonify country,  or  anything  else  that  awakens  strong 
emotion  in  us,  shows  our  imaginations  to  be  so  pro- 
foundly personal  that  deep  feeling  almost  inevita- 

78 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

bly  connects  itself  with  a  personal  image.  In  short, 
group  sentiment,  in  so  far  as  it  is  awakened  by  defi- 
nite images,  is  only  a  variety  of  personal  sentiment. 
A  sort  of  vague  agitation,  however,  is  sometimes 
produced  by  mere  numbers.  Thus  public  opinion 
is  sometimes  thought  of  as  a  vast  impersonal  force, 
like  a  great  wind,  though  ordinarily  it  is  conceived 
simply  as  the  opinion  of  particular  persons,  whose 
expressions  or  tones  are  more  or  less  definitely 
imagined. 

In  the  preceding  I  have  considered  the  rise  of  per- 
sonal ideas  chiefly  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
visual  or  auditory  element  in  them — the  personal 
symbol  or  vehicle  of  communication ;  but  of  course 
there  is  a  parallel  growth  in  feeling.  An  infant's 
states  of  feeling  may  be  supposed  to  be  nearly  as 
crude  as  his  ideas  of  the  appearance  of  things ;  and 
the  process  that  gives  form,  variety,  and  coherence  to 
the  latter  does  the  same  for  the  former.  It  is  pre- 
cisely the  act  of  intercourse,  the  stimulation  of  the 
mind  by  a  personal  symbol,  which  gives  a  formative 
impulse  to  the  vague  mass  of  hereditary  feeling-ten- 
dency, and  this  impulse,  in  turn,  results  in  a  larger 
power  of  interpreting  the  symbol.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed,  for  instance,  that  such  feelings  as  generos- 
ity, respect,  mortification,  emulation,  the  sense  of 
honor,  and  the  like,  are  an  original  endowment  of 
the  mind.  Like  all  the  finer  and  larger  mental  life 
these  arise  in  conjunction  with  communication  and 

79 


HUMAN  NATTJBE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

could  not  exist  without  it.  It  is  these  finer  modes  of 
feeling,  these  intricate  branchings  or  differentiations 
of  the  primitive  trunk  of  emotion,  to  which  the  name 
sentiments  is  usually  applied.  Personal  sentiments 
are  correlative  with  personal  symbols,  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  latter  meaning  nothing  more  than  that 
the  former  are  associated  with  them ;  while  the  sen- 
timents, in  turn,  cannot  be  felt  except  by  the  aid  of 
the  symbols.  If  I  see  a  face  and  feel  that  here  is 
an  honest  man,  it  means  that  I  have,  in  the  past, 
achieved  through  intercourse  an  idea  of  honest  per- 
sonality, with  the  visual  elements  of  which  the  face 
before  me  has  something  in  common,  so  that  it  calls 
up  this  socially  achieved  sentiment.  And  moreover 
in  knowing  this  honest  man  my  idea  of  honest 
personality  will  be  enlarged  and  corrected  for  fu- 
ture use.  Both  the  sentiment  and  its  visual  associ- 
ations will  be  somewhat  different  from  what  they 
were. 

Thus  no  personal  sentiment  is  the  exclusive  prod- 
uct of  any  one  influence,  but  all  is  of  various  origin 
and  has  a  social  history.  The  more  clearly  one  can 
grasp  this  fact  the  better,  at  least  if  I  am  right  in 
supposing  that  a  whole  system  of  wrong  thinking  re- 
sults from  overlooking  it  and  assuming  that  personal 
ideas  are  separable  and  fragmentary  elements  in  the 
mind.  Of  this  I  shall  say  more  presently.  The  fact 
I  mean  is  that  expressed  by  Shakespeare,  with  ref- 
erence to  love,  or  loving  friendship,  in  his  thirty-first 
sonnet : 

80 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

"  Thy  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts, 

Which  I  by  lacking  have  supposed  dead, 
And  there  reigns  love,  and  all  love's  loving  parts, 
And  all  those  friends  which  I  thought  buried. 


Thou  art  the  grave  where  buried  love  doth  live, 
Hung  with  the  trophies  of  my  lovers  gone, 

Who  all  their  parts  of  me  to  thee  did  give  ; 
That  due  of  many  now  is  thine  alone  : 

Their  images  I  loved  I  view  in  thee, 

And  thou  (all  they)  hast  all  the  all  of  me." 

In  this  sonnet  may  be  discerned,  I  think,  a  true 
theory  of  personal  sentiment,  quite  accordant  with 
the  genetic  point  of  view  of  modern  psychology,  and 
very  important  in  the  understanding  of  social  rela- 
tions. 

Facial  expression,  tone  of  voice,  and  the  like,  the 
sensible  nucleus  of  personal  and  social  ideas,  serve 
as  the  handle,  so  to  speak,  of  such  ideas,  the  principal 
substance  of  which  is  drawn  from  the  region  of  inner 
imagination  and  sentiment.  The  personality  of_a 
friend,  as  it  lives  in  my  mind  and  forms  there  a  part 
of  the  society  in  which  I  live,  is  simply  a  group  or 
system  of  thoughts  associated  withJEe  symbols  that 
stand  for  him.  To  think  of  him  is  to  revive  some 
part  of  the  system — to  have  the  old  feeling  along 
with  the  familiar  symbol,  though  perhaps  in  a  new 
connection  with  other  ideas.  The  real  and  intimate 
thing  in  him  is  the  thought  to  which  he  gives  life, 
the  feeling  his  presence  or  memory  has  the  power  to 

81 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

suggest.  This  clings  about  the  sensible  imagery,  the 
personal  symbols  already  discussed,  because  the  lat- 
ter have  served  as  bridges  by  which  we  have  en- 
tered other  minds  and  therein  enriched  our  own. 
We  have  laid  up  stores,  but  we  always  need  some 
help  to  get  at  them  in  order  that  we  may  use  and  in- 
crease them ;  and  this  help  commonly  consists  in 
something  visible  or  audible,  which  has  been  con- 
nected with  them  in  the  past  and  now  acts  as  a  key 
by  which  they  are  unlocked.  Thus  the  face  of  a 
friend  has  power  over  us  in  much  the  same  way  as 
the  sight  of  a  favorite  book,  of  the  flag  of  one's  coun- 
try, or  the  refrain  of  an  old  song  ;  it  starts  a  train  of 
thought,  lifts  the  curtain  from  an  intimate  experi- 
ence. And  his  presence  does  not  consist  in  the 
pressure  of  his  flesh  upon  a  neighboring  chair,  but 
in  the  thoughts  clustering  about  some  symbol  of 
him,  whether  the  latter  be  his  tangible  person  or 
something  else.  If  a  person  is  more  his  best  self  in 
a  letter  than  in  speech,  as  sometimes  happens,  he  is 
more  truly  present  to  me  in  his  correspondence  than 
when  I  see  and  hear  him.  And  in  most  cases  a 
favorite  writer  is  more  with  us  in  his  book  than  he 
ever  could  have  been  in  the  flesh ;  since,  being  a 
writer,  he  is  one  who  has  studied  and  perfected  this 
particular  mode  of  personal  incarnation,  very  likely 
to  the  detriment  of  any  other.  I  should  like  as  a 
matter  of  curiosity  to  see  and  hear  for  a  moment  the 
men  whose  works  I  admire ;  but  I  should  hardly  ex- 
pect to  find  further  intercourse  particularly  profitable. 

82 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

The  world  of  sentiment  and  imagination,  of  all 
finer  and  warmer  thought,  is  chiefly  a  personal  world 
— that  is,  it  is  inextricably  interwoven  with  personal 
symbols.  If  you  try  to  think  of  a  person  you  will 
find  that  what  you  really  think  is  chiefly  sentiments 
which  you  connect  with  his  image ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  if  you  try  to  recall  a  sentiment  you  will 
find,  as  a  rule,  that  it  will  not  come  up  except  along 
with  symbols  of  the  persons  who  have  suggested  it. 
To  think  of  love,  gratitude,  pity,  grief,  honor,  cour- 
age, justice,  and  the  like,  it  is  necessary  to  think  of 
people  by  whom  or  toward  whom  these  sentiments 
may  be  entertained.*  Thus  justice  may  be  recalled 
by  thinking  of  Washington,  kindness  by  Lincoln, 
honor  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  so  on.  The  reason 
for  this,  as  already  intimated,  is  that  sentiment  and 
imagination  are  generated,  for  the  most  part,  in  the 
life  of  communication,  and  so  belong  with  personal 
images  by  original  and  necessary  association,  having 
no  separate  existence  except  in  our  forms  of  speech. 
The  ideas  that  such  words  as  modesty  and  magna- 
nimity stand  for  could  never  have  been  formed  apart 
from  social  intercourse,  and  indeed  are  nothing  other 
than  remembered  aspects  of  such  intercourse.  To 
live  this  higher  life,  then,  we  must  live  with  others, 

*  With  me,  at  least,  this  is  the  case.  Some  whom  I  have  con- 
sulted find  that  certain  sentiments — for  instance,  pity — may  be 
directly  suggested  by  the  word,  without  the  mediation  of  a  personal 
symbol.  This  hardly  affects  the  argument,  as  it  will  not  be  doubted 
that  the  sentiment  was  in  its  inception  associated  with  a  personal 
symbol. 

83 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

by  the  aid  of  their  visible  presence,  by  reading  their 
words,  or  by  recalling  in  imagination  these  or  other 
symbols  of  them.  To  lose  our  hold  upon  them — as, 
for  example,  by  long  isolation  or  by  the  decay  of  the 
imagination  in  disease  or  old  age— is  to  lapse  into  a 
life  of  sensation  and  crude  instinct. 

So  far  as  the  study  of  immediate  social  relations  is 
concerned  the  personal  idea  is  the  real  person.  That 
is  to  say,  it  is  in  this  alone  that  one  man  exists  for 
another,  and  acts  directly  upon  his  mind.  My  asso- 
ciation with  you  evidently  consists  in  the  relation 
between  my  idea  of  you  and  the  rest  of  my  mind.  If 
there  is  something  in  you  that  is  wholly  beyond  this 
and  makes  no  impression  upon  me  it  has  no  social 
reality  in  this  relation.  Tlie  immediate  social  reality 
is  the  personal  idea  ;  nothing,  it  would  seem,  could  be 
much  more  obvious  than  this. 

Society,  then,  in  its  immediate  aspect,  is  a  relation 
among  personal  ideas.  In  order  to  have  society  it  is 
evidently  necessary  that  persons  should  get  together 
somewhere  ;  and  they  get  together  only  as  personal 
ideas  in  the  mind.  Where  else?  What  other  pos- 
sible locus  can  be  assigned  for  the  real  contact  of 
persons,  or  in  what  other  form  can  they  come  in  con- 
tact except  as  impressions  or  ideas  formed  in  this 
common  locus?  Society  exists  in  my  mind  as  the 
contact  and  reciprocal  influence  of  certain  ideas 
named  "I,"  Thomas,  Henry,  Susan,  Bridget,  and  so 
on.  It  exists  in  your  mind  as  a  similar  group,  and  so 

84 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

in  every  mind.  Each  person  is  immediately  aware 
of  a  particular  aspect  of  society  :  and  so  far  as  he  is 
aware  of  great  social  wholes,  like  a  nation  or  an 
epoch,  it  is  by  embracing  in  this  particular  aspect 
ideas  or  sentiments  which  he  attributes  to  his  coun- 
trymen or  contemporaries  in  their  collective  aspect. 
In  order  to  see  this  it  seems  to  me  only  necessary  to 
discard  vague  modes  of  speech  Avhich  have  no  con- 
ceptions back  of  them  that  will  bear  scrutiny,  and 
look  at  the  facts  as  we  know  them  in  experience. 

Yet  most  of  us,  perhaps,  will  find  it  hard  to  assent 
to  the  view  that  the  social  person  is  a  group  of  senti- 
ments attached  to  some  symbol  or  other  character- 
istic element,  which  keeps  them  together  and  from 
which  the  whole  idea  is  named.  The  reason  for  this 
reluctance  I  take  to  be  that  we  are  accustomed  to  talk 
and  think,  so  far  as  we  do  think  in  this  connection, 
as  if  a  person  were  a  material  rather  than  a  psychical 
fact.  Instead  of  basing  our  sociology  and  ethics  upon 
what  a  man  really  is  as  part  of  our  mental  and  moral 
life,  he  is  vaguely  and  yet  grossly  regarded  as  a 
shadowy  material  body,  a  lump  of  flesh,  and  not  as  an 
ideal  thing  at  all.  But  surely  it  is  only  common 
sense  to  hold  that  the  social  and  moral  reality  is  that 
which  lives  in  our  imaginations  and  affects  our 
motives.  As  regards  the  physical  it  is  only  the  finer, 
more  plastic  and  mentally  significant  aspects  of  it 
that  imagination  is  concerned  with,  and  with  that 
chiefly  as  a  nucleus  or  centre  of  crystallization  for 
sentiment.  Instead  of  perceiving  this  we  commonly 

85 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDEK 

make  the  physical  the  dominant  factor,  and  think  of 
the  mental  and  moral  only  by  a  vague  analogy  to  it. 

Persons  and  society  must,  then,  be  studied  prima- 
rily in  the  imagination.  It  is  surely  true,  prima  facie, 
that  the  best  way  of  observing  things  is  that  which  is 
most  direct ;  and  I  do  not  see  how  anyone  can  hold 
that  we  know  persons  directly  except  as  imaginative 
ideas  in  the  mind.  These  are  perhaps  the  most  vivid 
things  in  our  experience,  and  as  observable  as  any- 
thing else,  though  it  is  a  kind  of  observation  in  which 
accuracy  has  not  been  systematically  cultivated.  The 
observation  of  the  physical  aspects,  however  import- 
ant, is  for  social  purposes  quite  subsidiary :  there  is 
no  way  of  weighing  or  measuring  men  which  throws 
more  than  a  very  dim  side-light  on  their  personality. 
The  physical  factors  most  significant  are  those  elusive 
traits  of  expression  already  discussed,  and  in  the  ob- 
servation and  interpretation  of  these  physical  science 
is  only  indirectly  helpful.  What,  for  instance,  could 
the  most  elaborate  knowledge  of  his  weights  and 
measures,  including  the  anatomy  of  his  brain,  tell  us 
of  the  character  of  Napoleon  ?  Not  enough,  I  take 
it,  to  distinguish  him  with  certainty  from  an  imbecile. 
Our  real  knowledge  of  him  is  derived  from  reports  of 
his  conversation  and  manner,  from  his  legislation 
and  military  dispositions,  from  the  impression  made 
upon  those  about  him  and  by  them  communicated  to 
us,  from  his  portraits  and  the  like ;  all  serving  as  aids 
to  the  imagination  in  forming  a  system  that  we  call 

86 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

by  his  name.  I  by  no  means  aim  to  discredit  the 
study  of  man  or  of  society  with  the  aid  of  physical 
measurements,  such  as  those  of  psychological  labora- 
tories ;  but  I  think  that  these  methods  are  indirect 
and  ancillary  in  their  nature  and  are  most  useful  when 
employed  in  connection  with  a  trained  imagination. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  imaginations  which 
people  have  of  one  another  are  the  solid  facts  of  soci- 
ety, and  that  to  observe  and  interpret  these  must  be  a 
chief  aim  of  sociology.  I  do  not  mean  merely  that  so- 
ciety must  be  studied  by  the  imagination — that  is  true 
of  all  investigations  in  their  higher  reaches — but  that 
the  object  of  study  is  primarily  an  imaginative  idea  or 
group  of  ideas  in  the  mind,  that  we  have  to  imagine 
imaginations.  The  intimate  grasp  of  any  social  fact 
will  be  found  to  require  that  we  divine  what  men 
think  of  one  another.  Charity,  for  instance,  is  not 
understood  without  imagining  what  ideas  the  giver 
and  recipient  have  of  each  other ;  to  grasp  homicide 
we  must,  for  one  thing,  conceive  how  the  offender 
thinks  of  his  victim  and  of  the  administrators  of  the 
law ;  the  relation  between  the  employing  and  hand- 
laboring  classes  is  first  of  all  a  matter  of  personal 
attitudes  which  we  must  apprehend  by  sympathy 
with  both,  and  so  on.  In  other  words,  we  want  to  get 
at  motives,  and  motives  spring  from  personal  ideas. 
There  is  nothing  particularly  novel  in  this  view ;  his- 
torians, for  instance,  have  always  assumed  that  to 
understand  and  interpret  personal  relations  was  their 
main  business;  but  apparently  the  time  is  coming 

87 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

when  this  will  have  to  be  done  in  a  more  systematic 
and  penetrating  manner  than  in  the  past.  Whatever 
may  justly  be  urged  against  the  introduction  of  friv- 
olous and  disconnected  "  personalities  "  into  history, 
the  understanding  of  persons  is  the  aim  of  this  and  all 
other  branches  of  social  study. 

It  is  important  to  face  the  question  of  persons  who 
have  no  corporeal  reality,  as  for  instance  the  dead, 
characters  of  fiction  or  the  drama,  ideas  of  the  gods 
and  the  like.  Are  these  real  people,  members  of 
society  ?  I  should  say  that  in  so  far  as  we  imagine 
them  they  are.  Would  it  not  be  absurd  to  deny 
social  reality  to  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  who  is  so 
much  alive  in  many  minds  and  so  potently  affects 
important  phases  of  thought  and  conduct  ?  He  is 
certainly  more  real  in  this  practical  sense  than  most 
of  us  who  have  not  yet  lost  our  corporeity,  more  alive, 
perhaps,  than  he  was  before  he  lost  his  own,  because 
of  his  wider  influence.  And  so  Colonel  Newcome,  or 
Bomola,  or  Hamlet  is  real  to  the  imaginative  reader 
with  the  realest  kind  of  reality,  the  kind  that  works 
directly  upon  his  personal  character.  And  the  like  is 
true  of  the  conceptions  of  supernatural  beings  handed 
down  by  the  aid  of  tradition  among  all  peoples. 
What,  indeed,  would  society  be,  or  what  would  any 
one  of  us  be,  if  we  associated  only  with  corporeal  per- 
sons and  insisted  that  no  one  should  enter  our  com- 
pany who  could  not  show  his  power  to  tip  the  scales 
and  cast  a  shadow  ? 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

On  the  other  hand,  a  corporeally  existent  person  is 
not  socially  real  unless  he  is  imagined.  If  the  noble- 
man thinks  of  the  serf  as  a  mere  animal  and  does  not 
attribute  to  him  a  human  way  of  thinking  and  feeling 
the  latter  is  not  real  to  him  in  the  sense  of  acting 
personally  upon  his  mind  and  conscience.  And  if  a 
man  should  go  into  a  strange  country  and  hide  him- 
self so  completely  that  no  one  knew  he  was  there,  he 
would  evidently  have  no  social  existence  for  the 
inhabitants. 

In  saying  this  I  hope  I  do  not  seem  to  question 
the  independent  reality  of  persons  or  to  confuse  it 
with  personal  ideas.  The  man  is  one  thing  and  the 
various  ideas  entertained  about  him  are  another  ;  but 
the  latter,_the_personal  idea,  is  the  immediate  social 
reality,  the  thing  in  which  men  exist  for  one  another, 
and  work  directly  upon  one  another's  lives.  Thus 
any  study  of  society  that  is  not  supported  by  a  firm 
grasp  of  personal  ideas  is  empty  and  dead — mere 
doctrine  and  not  knowledge  at  all. 

I  believe  that  the  vaguely  material  notion  of  per- 
sonality, which  does  not  confront  the  social  fact  at 
all  but  assumes  it  to  be  the  analogue  of  the  physical 
fact,  is  a  main  source  of  fallacious  thinking  about 
ethics,  politics,  and  indeed  every  aspect  of  social  and 
personal  life.  It  seems  to  underlie  all  four  of  the 
ways  of  conceiving  society  and  the  individual  alleged 
in  the  first  chapter  to  be  false.  If  the  person  is 
thought  of  primarily  as  a  separate  material  form,  in- 

89 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

habited  by  thoughts  and  feelings  conceived  by  anal- 
ogy to  be  equally  separate,  then  the  only  way  of  get- 
ting a  society  is  by  adding  on  a  new  principle  of 
socialism,  social  faculty,  altruism,  or  the  like.  But  if 
you  start  with  the  idea  that  the  social  person  is  pri- 
marily a  fact  in  the  mind,  and  observe  him  there, 
you  find  at  once  that  he  has  no  existence  apart  from 
a  mental  whole  of  which  all  personal  ideas  are  mem- 
bers, and  which  is  a  particular  aspect  of  society. 
Every  one  of  these  ideas,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  out- 
come of  our  experience  of  all  the  persons  we  have 
known,  and  is  only  a  special  aspect  of  our  general 
idea  of  mankind. 

To  many  people  it  would  seem  mystical  to  say  that 
persons,  as  we  know  them,  are  not  separable  and 
mutually  exclusive,  like  physical  bodies,  so  that  what 
is  part  of  one  cannot  be  part  of  another,  but  that 
they  interpenetrate  one  another,  the  same  element 
pertaining  to  different  persons  at  different  times,  or 
even  at  the  same  time :  yet  this  is  a  verifiable  and 
not  very  abstruse  fact.*  The  sentiments  which 
make  up  the  largest  and  most  vivid  part  of  our  idea 
of  any  person  are  not,  as  a  rule,  peculiarly  and  ex- 

*  This  idea  that  social  persons  are  not  mutually  exclusive  but 
composed  largely  of  common  elements  is  implied  in  Professor  Will- 
iam James's  doctrine  of  the  Social  Self  and  set  forth  at  more  length 
in  Professor  James  Mark  Baldwin's  Social  and  Ethical  Interpreta- 
tions of  Mental  Development.  Like  other  students  of  social  psy- 
chology I  have  received  much  instruction  and  even  more  helpful 
provocation  from  the  latter  brilliant  and  original  work.  To  Pro- 
fessor James  my  obligation  is  perhaps  greater  still. 

90 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

clusively  his,  but  each  one  may  be  entertained  in 
conjunction  with  other  persons  also.  It  is,  so  to 
speak,  at  the  point  of  intersection  of  many  personal 
ideas,  and  may  be  reached  through  any  one  of  them. 
Not  only  Philip  Sidney  but  many  other  people  call 
up  the  sentiment  of  honor,  and  likewise  with  kind- 
ness, magnanimity,  and  so  on.  Perhaps  these  sen- 
timents are  never  precisely  the  same  in  any  two 
cases,  but  they  are  nearly  enough  alike  to  act  in 
about  the  same  manner  upon  our  motives,  which  is 
the  main  thing  from  a  practical  point  of  view.  Any 
kindly  face  will  arouse  friendly  feeling,  any  suffering 
child  awaken  pity,  any  brave  man  inspire  respect. 
A  sense  of  justice,  of  something  being  due  to  a  man 
as  such,  is  potentially  a  part  of  the  idea  of  every  man 
I  know.  All  such  feelings  are  a  cumulative  product 
of  social  experience  and  do  not  belong  exclusively  to 
any  one  personal  symbol.  A  sentiment,  if  we  con- 
sider it  as  something  in  itself,  is  vaguely,  indetermi- 
nately personal ;  it  may  come  to  life,  with  only  slight 
variations,  in  connection  with  any  one  of  many  sym- 
bols ;  whether  it  is  referred  to  one  or  to  another,  or  to 
two  or  more  at  once,  is  determined  by  the  way  one's 
thoughts  arrange  themselves,  by  the  connection  in 
which  the  sentiment  is  suggested. 

As  regards  one's  self  in  relation  to  other  people,  I 
shall  have  more  to  say  in  a  later  chapter ;  but  I  may 
say  here  that  there  is  no  view  of  the  self,  that  will 
bear  examination,  which  makes  it  altogether  distinct, 

91 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

in  our  minds,  from  other  persons.  If  it  includes  the 
whole  mind,  then,  of  course,  it  includes  all  the  per- 
sons we  think  of,  all  the  society  which  lives  in  our 
thoughts.  If  we  confine  it  to  a  certain  part  of  our 
thought  with  which  we  connect  a  distinctive  emotion 
or  sentiment  called  self-feeling,  as  I  prefer  to  do,  it 
still  includes  the  persons  with  whom  we  feel  most 
identified.  Self  and  other  do  not  exist  as  mutually 
exclusive  social  facts,  and  phraseology  which  implies 
that  they  do,  like  the  antithesis  egoism  versus  altru- 
ism, is  open  to  the  objection  of  vagueness,  if  not  of 
falsity.*  It  seems  to  me  that  the  classification  of 
impulses  as  altruistic  and  egoistic,  with  or  without  a 

*  I  distinguish,  of  course,  between  egotism,  which  is  an  English 
word  of  long  standing,  and  egoism,  which  was,  I  believe,  somewhat 
recently  introduced  by  moralists  to  designate,  in  antithesis  to  altru- 
ism, certain  theories  or  facts  of  ethics.  I  do  not  object  to  these 
words  as  names  of  theories,  but  as  purporting  to  be  names  of  facts 
of  conduct  I  do,  and  have  in  mind  more  particularly  their  use  by 
Herbert  Spencer  in  his  Principles  of  Psychology  and  other  works. 
As  used  by  Spencer  they  seem  to  me  valid  from  a  physiological 
standpoint  only,  and  fallacious  when  employed  to  describe  mental, 
social,  or  moral  facts.  The  trouble  is,  as  with  his  whole  system, 
that  the  physiological  aspect  of  life  is  expounded  and  assumed,  ap- 
parently, to  be  the  only  aspect  that  science  can  consider.  Having 
ventured  to  find  fault  with  Spencer,  I  may  be  allowed  to  add  that  I 
have  perhaps  learned  as  much  from  him  as  from  any  other  writer. 
If  only  his  system  did  not  appear  at  first  quite  so  complete  and  final 
one  might  more  easily  remain  loyal  to  it  in  spite  of  its  deficiencies. 
But  when  these  latter  begin  to  appear  its  very  completeness  makes 
it  seem  a  sort  of  a  prison-wall  which  one  must  break  down  to  get 
out 

I  shall  try  to  show  the  nature  of  egotism  and  selfishness  in  Chap- 
ter VI. 

92 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

third  class  called,  perhaps,  ego-altruistic,  is  empty ; 
and  I  do  not  see  how  any  other  conclusion  can  result 
from  a  concrete  study  of  the  matter.  There  is  no 
class  of  altruistic  impulses  specifically  different  from 
other  impulses  :  all  our  higher,  socially  developed 
sentiments  are  indeterminately  personal,  and  may  be 
associated  with  self -feeling,  or  with  whatever  personal 
symbol  may  happen  to  arouse  them.  Those  feelings 
which  are  merely  sensual  and  have  not  been  refined 
into  sentiments  by  communication  and  imagination 
are  not  so  much  egoistic  as  merely  animal :  they  do 
not  pertain  to  social  persons,  either  first  or  second, 
but  belong  in  a  lower  stratum  of  thought.  Sensuality 
is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  social  self.  As  I  shall 
try  to  show  later  we  do  not  think  "  I "  except  with 
reference  to  a  complementary  thought  of  other  per- 
sons; it  is  an  idea  developed  by  association  and 
com  munication. 

The  egoism-altruism  way  of  speaking  falsifies  the 
facts  at  the  most  vital  point  possible  by  assuming 
that  our  impulses  relating  to  persons  are  separable 
into  two  classes,  the  I  impulses  and  the  You  impulses, 
in  much  the  same  way  that  physical  persons  are  sep- 
arable ;  whereas  a  primary  fact  throughout  the  range 
of  sentiment  is  a  fusion  of  persons,  so  that  the  im- 
pulse belongs  not  to  one  or  the  other,  but  precisely 
to  the  common  ground  that  both  occupy,  to  their  in- 
tercourse or  mingling.  Thus  the  sentiment  of  grati- 
tude does  not  pertain  to  me  as  against  you,  nor  to 
you  as  against  me,  but  springs  right  from  our  union, 

93 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  so  with  all  personal  sentiment.  Special  terras 
like  egoism  and  altruism  are  presumably  introduced 
into  moral  discussions  for  the  more  accurate  naming 
of  facts.  But  I  cannot  discover  the  facts  for  which 
these  are  supposed  to  be  names.  The  more  I  con- 
sider the  matter  the  more  they  appear  to  be  mere 
fictions  of  analogical  thought.  If  you  have  no  defi- 
nite idea  of  personality  or  self  beyond  the  physical 
idea  you  are  naturally  led  to  regard  the  higher  phases 
of  thought,  which  have  no  evident  relation  to  the 
body,  as  in  some  way  external  to  the  first  person  or 
self.  Thus  instead  of  psychology,  sociology,  or  ethics 
we  have  a  mere  shadow  of  physiology. 

Pity  is  typical  of  the  impulses  ordinarily  called  al- 
truistic ;  but  if  one  thinks  of  the  question  closely  it 
is  hard  to  see  how  this  adjective  is  especially  appli- 
cable to  it.  Pity  is  not  aroused  exclusively  by  images 
or  symbols  of  other  persons,  as  against  those  of  one's 
self.  If  I  think  of  my  own  body  in  a  pitiable  condi- 
tion I  am  perhaps  as  likely  to  feel  pity  as  if  I  think 
of  someone  else  in  such  a  condition.*  At  any  rate, 
self-pity  is  much  too  common  to  be  ignored.  Even  if 
the  sentiment  were  aroused  only  by  symbols  of  other 
persons  it  would  not  necessarily  be  non -egoistic.  "A 
father  pitieth  his  children,"  but  any  searching  analy- 
sis will  show  that  he  incorporates  the  children  into 

*  Some  may  question  whether  we  can  pity  ourselves  in  this  way. 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  we  avoid  self-pity  only  by  not  vividly  im- 
agining ourselves  in  a  piteous  plight ;  and  that  if  we  do  so  imagine 
ourselves  the  sentiment  follows  quite  naturally. 

94 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEKSONAL  IDEAS 

his  own  imaginative  self.  And,  finally,  pity  is  not 
necessarily  moral  or  good,  but  is  often  mere  "  self- 
indulgence,"  as  when  it  is  practised  at  the  expense  of 
justice  and  true  sympathy.  A  "  wounding  pity,"  to 
use  a  phrase  of  Mr.  Stevenson's,  is  one  of  the  com- 
monest forms  of  objectionable  sentiment.  In  short, 
pity  is  a  sentiment  like  any  other,  having  in  itself  no 
determinate  personality,  as  first  or  second,  and  no 
determinate  moral  character :  personal  reference 
and  moral  rank  depend  upon  the  conditions  under 
which  it  is  suggested.  The  reason  that  it  strikes  us 
as  appropriate  to  call  pity  "  altruistic  "  apparently  is 
that  it  often  leads  directly  and  obviously  to  helpful 
practical  activity,  as  toward  the  poor  or  the  sick. 
But  "  altruistic "  is  used  to  imply  something  more 
than  kindly  or  benevolent,  some  radical  psychological 
or  moral  distinction  between  this  sentiment  or  class 
of  sentiments  and  others  called  egoistic,  and  this  dis- 
tinction appears  not  to  exist.  All  social  sentiments 
are  altruistic  in  the  sense  that  they  involve  reference 
to  another  person  ;  few  are  so  in  the  sense  that  they 
exclude  the  self.  The  idea  of  a  division  on  this  line 
appears  to  flow  from  a  vague  presumption  that  per- 
sonal ideas  must  have  a  separateness  answering  to 
that  of  material  bodies. 

I  do  not  mean  to  deny  or  depreciate  the  fact  of 
personal  opposition  ;  it  is  real  and  most  important, 
though  it  does  not  rest  upon  any  such  essential  and, 
as  it  were,  material  separateness  as  the  common  way 
of  thinking  implies.  At  a  given  moment  personal 

95 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

symbols  may  stand  for  different  and  opposing  ten- 
dencies ;  thus  the  missionary  may  be  urging  me  to 
contribute  to  his  cause,  and,  if  he  is  skilful,  the  im- 
pulses he  awakens  will  move  me  in  that  direction ; 
but  if  I  think  of  my  wife  and  children  and  the  sum- 
mer outing  I  had  planned  to  give  them  from  my 
savings,  an  opposite  impulse  appears.  And  in  all 
such  cases  the,  very  fact  of  opposition  and  the  atten- 
tion thereby  drawn  to  the  conflicting  impulses  gives 
emphasis  to  them,  so  that  common  elements  are 
overlooked  and  the  persons  in  the  imagination  seem 
separate  and  exclusive. 

In  such  cases,  however,  the  harmonizing  or  moral- 
izing of  the  situation  consists  precisely  in  evoking  or 
appealing  to  the  common  element  in  the  apparently 
conflicting  personalities,  that  is  to  some  sentiment  of 
justice  or  right.  Thus  I  may  say  to  myself,  "  I  can 
afford  a  dollar,  but  ought  not,  out  of  consideration 
for  my  family,  to  give  more,"  and  may  be  able  to 
imagine  all  parties  accepting  this  view  of  the  case. 

Opposition  between  one's  self  and  someone  else  is 
also  a  very  real  thing  ;  but  this  opposition,  instead 
of  coming  from  a  separateness  like  that  of  material 
bodies,  is,  on  the  contrary,  dependent  upon  a  measure 
of  community  between  one's  self  and  the  disturbing 
other,  so  that  the  hostility  between  one's  self  and  a 
social  person  may  always  be  described  as  hostile 
sympathy.  And  the  sentiments  connected  with  op- 
position, like  resentment,  pertain  neither  to  myself, 
considered  separately,  nor  to  the  symbol  of  the  other 

96 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

person,  but  to  ideas  including  both.  I  shall  discuss 
these  matters  at  more  length  in  subsequent  chapters ; 
the  main  thing  here  is  to  note  that  personal  oppo- 
sition does  not  involve  mechanical  separateness,  but 
arises  from  the  emphasis  of  inconsistent  elements  in 
ideas  having  much  in  common. 

The  relations  to  one  another  and  to  the  mind  of  the 
various  persons  one  thinks  of  might  be  rudely  pict- 
ured in  some  such  way  as  this.  Suppose  we  conceive 
the  mind  as  a  vast  wall  covered  with  electric-light 
bulbs,  each  of  which  represents  a  possible  thought  or 
impulse  whose  presence  in  our  consciousness  may  be 
indicated  by  the  lighting  up  of  the  bulb.  Now  each 
of  the  persons  we  know  is  represented  in  such  a 
scheme,  not  by  a  particular  area  of  the  wall  set  apart 
for  him,  but  by  a  system  of  hidden  connections  among 
the  bulbs  which  causes  certain  combinations  of  them 
to  be  lit  up  when  his  characteristic  symbol  is  sug- 
gested. If  something  presses  the  button  correspond- 
ing to  my  friend  A,  a  peculiarly  shaped  figure  ap- 
pears upon  the  wall ;  when  that  is  released  and  B's 
button  is  pressed  another  figure  appears,  including 
perhaps  many  of  the  same  lights,  yet  unique  as  a 
whole  though  not  in  its  parts  ;  and  so  on  with  as 
many  people  as  you  please.  It  should  also  be  con- 
sidered that  we  usually  think  of  a  person  in  relation 
to  some  particular  social  situation,  and  that  those 
phases  of  him  that  bear  on  this  situation  are  the  only 
ones  vividly  conceived.  To  recall  someone  is  com- 
monly to  imagine  how  this  or  that  idea  would  strike 

97 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

him,  what  he  would  say  or  do  in  our  place,  and  so 
on.  Accordingly,  only  some  part,  some  appropriate 
and  characteristic  part,  of  the  whole  figure  that  might 
be  lighted  up  in  connection  with  a  man's  symbol,  is 
actually  illuminated. 

To  introduce  the  self  into  this  illustration  we  might 
say  that  the  lights  near  the  centre  of  the  wall  were  of 
a  particular  color — say  red — which  faded,  not  too 
abruptly,  into  white  toward  the  edges.  This  red 
would  represent  self -feeling,  and  other  persons  would 
be  more  or  less  colored  by  it  accordingly  as  they 
were  or  were  not  intimately  identified  with  our  cher- 
ished activities.  In  a  mother's  mind,  for  instance, 
her  child  would  lie  altogether  in  the  inmost  and 
reddest  area.  Thus  the  same  sentiment  may  belong 
to  the  self  and  to  several  other  persons  at  the  same 
time.  If  a  man  and  his  family  are  suffering  from  his 
being  thrown  out  of  work  his  apprehension  and  re- 
sentment will  be  part  of  his  idea  of  each  member  of 
his  family,  as  well  as  part  of  his  self-idea  and  of  the 
idea  of  people  whom  he  thinks  to  blame. 

I  trust  it  will  be  plain  that  there  is  nothing  fan- 
tastic, unreal,  or  impractical  about  this  way  of  con- 
ceiving people,  that  is  by  observing  them  as  facts  of 
the  imagination.  On  the  contrary,  the  fantastic, 
unreal,  and  practically  pernicious  way  is  the  ordinary 
and  traditional  one  of  speculating  upon  them  as 
shadowy  bodies,  without  any  real  observation  of 
them  as  mental  facts.  It  is  the  man  as  imagined 
that  we  love  or  hate,  imitate,  or  avoid,  that  helps  or 

98 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PEESONAL  IDEAS 

harms  us,  that  moulds  our  wills  and  our  careers. 
What  is  it  that  makes  a  person  real  to  us ;  is  it 
material  contact  or  contact  in  the  imagination? 
Suppose,  for  instance,  that  on  suddenly  turning  a 
corner  I  collide  with  one  coming  from  the  opposite 
direction  :  I  receive  a  slight  bruise,  have  the  breath 
knocked  out  of  me,  exchange  conventional  apologies, 
and  immediately  forget  the  incident.  It  takes  no 
intimate  hold  upon  me,  means  nothing  except  a  slight 
and  temporary  disturbance  in  the  animal  processes. 
Now  suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  that  I  take  up 
Froude's  "  Caesar,"  and  presently  find  myself,  under 
the  guidance  of  that  skilful  writer,  imagining  a  hero 
whose  body  long  ago  turned  to  clay.  He  is  alive  in 
my  thought :  there  is  perhaps  some  notion  of  his 
visible  presence,  and  along  with  this  the  awakening 
of  sentiments  of  audacity,  magnanimity  and  the  like, 
that  glow  with  intense  life,  consume  my  energy,  make 
me  resolve  to  be  like  Caesar  in  some  respect,  and 
cause  me  to  see  right  and  wrong  and  other  great 
questions  as  I  conceive  he  would  have  seen  them. 
Very  possibly  he  keeps  me  awake  after  I  go  to  bed — 
every  boy  has  lain  awake  thinking  of  book  people. 
My  whole  after  life  will  be  considerably  affected  by 
this  experience,  and  yet  this  is  a  contact  that  takes 
place  only  in  the  imagination.  Even  as  regards  the 
physical  organism  it  is  immeasurably  more  important, 
as  a  rule,  than  the  material  collision.  A  blow  in  the 
face,  if  accidental  and  so  not  disturbing  to  the  im- 
agination, affects  the  nerves,  the  heart,  and  the  diges- 

99 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tion  very  little,  but  an  injurious  word  or  look  may 
cause  sleepless  nights,  dyspepsia,  or  palpitation.  It 
is,  then,  the  personal  idea,  the  man  in  the  imagina- 
tion, the  real  man  of  power  and  fruits,  that  we  need 
primarily  to  consider,  and  he  appears  to  be  some- 
what different  from  the  rather  conventional  and  ma- 
terial man  of  traditionary  social  philosophy. 

According  to  this  view  of  the  matter  society  is 
simply  the  collective  aspect  of  personal  thought. 
Each  man's  imagination,  regarded  as  a  mass  of  per- 
sonal impressions  worked  up  into  a  living,  growing 
whole,  is  a  special  phase  of  society ;  and  Mind  or 
Imagination  as  a  whole,  that  is  human  thought  con- 
sidered in  the  largest  way  as  having  a  growth  and 
organization  extending  throughout  the  ages,  is  the 
locus  of  society  in  the  widest  possible  sense. 

It  may  be  objected  that  society  in  this  sense  has 
no  definite  limits,  but  seems  to  include  the  whole 
range  of  experience.  That  is  to  say,  the  mind  is  all 
one  growth,  and  we  cannot  draw  any  distinct  line 
between  personal  thought  and  other  thought.  There 
is  probably  no  such  thing  as  an  idea  that  is  wholly 
independent  of  minds  other  than  that  in  which  it 
exists  ;  through  heredity,  if  not  through  communica- 
tion, all  is  connected  with  the  general  life,  and  so  in 
some  sense  social.  What  are  spoken  of  above  as 
personal  ideas  are  merely  those  in  which  the  connec- 
tion with  other  persons  is  most  direct  and  apparent. 
This  objection,  however,  applies  to  any  way  of  defin- 
ing society,  and  those  who  take  the  material  stand- 

100 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

point  are  obliged  to  consider  whether  houses,  factories, 
domestic  animals,  tilled  land,  and  so  on  are  not  really 
parts  of  the  social  order.  The  truth,  of  course,  is 
that  all  life  hangs  together  in  such  a  manner  that 
any  attempt  to  delimit  a  part  of  it  is  artificial. 
Society  is  rather  a  phase  of  life  than  a  thing  by 
itself ;  it  is  life  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of 
personal  intercourse.  And  personal  intercourse  may 
be  considered  either  in  its  primary  aspects,  such  as 
are  treated  in  this  book,  or  in  secondary  aspects, 
such  as  groups,  institutions,  or  processes.  Sociology, 
I  suppose,  is  the  science  of  these  things. 


101 


A 

CHAPTER  IV 

SYMPATHY    OR    COMMUNION   AS  AN  ASPECT 
OF  SOCIETY 

THE  MEANING  OF  SYMPATHY  AS  HERE  USED — ITS  RELATION  TO 
THOUGHT,  SENTIMENT,  AND  SOCIAL  EXPERIENCE — THE  RANGE 
OF  SYMPATHY  is  A  MEASURE  OF  PERSONALITY,  e.</.,  OF  POWER, 
OF  MORAL  RANK,  AND  OF  SANITY — A  MAN'S  SYMPATHIES  RE- 
FLECT THE  STATE  OF  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER — SPECIALIZATION  AND 
BREADTH — SYMPATHY  REFLECTS  SOCIAL  PROCESS  IN  THE 
MINGLING  OF  LIKENESS  WITH  DIFFERENCE— ALSO  IN  THAT  IT 
yr  is  A  PROCESS  OF  SELECTION  GUIDED  BY  FEELING — THE  MEAN- 
ING OF  LOVE  IN  SOCIAL  DISCUSSION — LOVE  IN  RELATION  TO 
SELF— THE  STUDY  OF  SYMPATHY  REVEALS  THE  VITAL  UNITY 
OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 

/THE  personal  idea  in  its  more  penetrating  interpre- 
tations involves  sympathy,  in  the  sense  of  primary 
communication  or  an  entering  into  and  sharing  the 
mind  of  someone  else.  When  I  converse  with  a  man, 
through  words,  looks,  or  other  symbols,  I  have  more 
or  less  intelligence  or  communion  with  him,  we  get 
on  common  ground  and  have  similar  ideas  and  senti- 
ments. If  one  uses  sympathy  in  this  connection — and 
it  is  perhaps  the  most  available  word — one  has  to 
bear  in  mind  that  it  denotes  the  sharing  of  any  men- 
tal state  that  can  be  communicated,  and  has  not  the 
special  implication  of  pity  or  other  "  tender  emo- 
tion "  that  it  very  commonly  carries  in  ordinary 

102 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

speech.*  This  emotionally  colorless  usage  is,  how- 
ever, perfectly  legitimate,  and  is,  I  think,  more  com- 
mon in  classical  English  literature  than  any  other. 
Thus  Shakespeare,  who  uses  sympathy  five  times,  if 
we  may  trust  the  "  Shakespeare  Phrase  Book,"  never 
means  by  it  the  particular  emotion  of  compassion, 

*  Sympathy  in  the  sense  of  compassion  is  a  specific  emotion  or 
sentiment,  and  has  nothing  necessarily  in  common  with  sympathy 
in  the  sense  of  communion.  It  might  be  thought,  perhaps,  that 
compassion  was  one  form  of  the  sharing  of  feeling ;  but  this  ap- 
pears not  to  be  the  case.  The  sharing  of  painful  feeling  may  pre- 
cede and  cause  compassion,  but  is  not  the  same  with  it.  When  I 
feel  sorry  for  a  man  in  disgrace,  it  is,  no  doubt,  in  most  cases, 
because  I  have  imaginatively  partaken  of  his  humiliation ;  but  my 
compassion  for  him  is  not  the  thing  that  is  shared,  but  is  something 
additional,  a  comment  on  the  shared  feeling.  I  may  imagine  how 
a  suffering  man  feels — sympathize  with  him  in  that  sense— and  be 
moved  not  to  pity  but  to  disgust,  contempt,  or  perhaps  admiration. 
Our  feeling  makes  all  sorts  of  comments  on  the  imagined  feeling 
of  others.  Moreover  it  is  not  essential  that  there  should  be  any 
real  understanding  in  order  that  compassion  may  be  felt.  One  may 
compassionate  a  worm  squirming  on  a  hook,  or  a  fish,  or  even  a 
tree.  As  between  persons  pity,  while  often  a  helpful  and  healing 
emotion,  leading  to  kindly  acts,  is  sometimes  indicative  of  the  ab- 
sence of  true  sympathy.  We  all  wish  to  be  understood,  at  least  in 
what  we  regard  as  our  better  aspects,  but  few  of  us  wish  to  be 
pitied  except  in  moments  of  weakness  and  discouragement.  To 
accept  pity  is  to  confess  that  one  falls  below  the  healthy  standard  of 
vigor  and  self-help.  While  a  real  understanding  of  our  deeper 
thought  is  rare  and  precious,  pity  is  usually  cheap,  many  people 
finding  an  easy  pleasure  in  indulging  it,  as  one  may  in  the  indul- 
gence of  grief,  resentment,  or  almost  any  emotion.  It  is  often  felt 
by  the  person  who  is  its  object  as  a  sort  of  an  insult,  a  back-handed 
thrust  at  self-respect,  the  unkindest  cut  of  all.  For  instance,  as 
between  richer  and  poorer  classes  in  a  free  country  a  mutually 
respecting  antagonism  is  much  healthier  than  pity  on  the  one  hand 
and  dependence  on  the  other,  and  is,  perhaps,  the  next  best  thing 
to  fraternal  feeling. 

103 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  OKDEK 

but  either _the^haring  of  a  mental  state,  as  when  he 
speaks  of  "  sympathy  in  choice,"  or  mere  resemblance, 
as  when  lago  mentions  the  lack  of  "  sympathy  in 
i  years,  manners  and  beauties  "  between  Othello  and 
Desdemona.  This  latter  sense  is  also  one  which 
must  be  excluded  in  our  use  of  the  word,  since  what 
is  here  meant  is  an  active  process  of  mental  assimi- 
lation, not  mere  likeness. 

In  this  chapter  sympathy,  in  the  sense  of  commu- 
nion or  personal  insight,  will  be  considered  chiefly 
with  a  view  to  showing  something  of  its  nature  as  a 
phase  or  member  of  the  general  life  of  mankind. 

The  content  of  it,  the  matter  communicated,  is 
chiefly  thought  and  sentiment,  in  distinction  from 
mere  sensation  or  crude  emotion.  I  do  not  venture  to 
say  that  these  latter  cannot  be  shared,  but  certainly 
they  play  a  relatively  small  part  in  the  communicative 
life.  Thus  although  to  get  one's  finger  pinched  is  a 
common  experience,  it  is  impossible,  to  me  at  least, 
to  recall  the  sensation  when  another  person  has  his 
finger  pinched.  So  when  we  say  that  we  feel  sym- 
pathy for  a  person  who  has  a  headache,  we  mean  that 
we  pity  him,  not  that  we  share  the  headache.  There 
is  little  true  communication  of  physical  pain,  or  any- 
thing of  that  simple  sort.  The  reason  appears  to  be 
that  as  ideas  of  this  kind  are  due  to  mere  physical 
contacts,  or  other  simple  stimuli,  in  the  first  instance, 
they  are  and  remain  detached  and  isolated  in  the 
mind,  so  that  they  are  unlikely  to  be  recalled  except 

104 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

by  some  sensation  of  the  sort  originally  associated 
with  them.  If  they  become  objects  of  thought  and 
conversation,  as  is  likely  to  be  the  case  when  they  are 
agreeable,  they  are  by  that  very  process  refined  into 
sentiments.  Thus  when  the  pleasures  of  the  table  are 
discussed  the  thing  communicated  is  hardly  the  sen- 
sation of  taste  but  something  much  subtler,  although 
partly  based  upon  that.  Thought  and  sentiment  are 
from  the  first  parts  or  aspects  of  highly  complex  and 
imaginative  personal  ideas,  and  of  course  may  be 
reached  by  anything  which  recalls  any  part  of  those 
ideas.  They  are  aroused  by  personal  intercourse  be- 
cause in  their  origin  they  are  connected  with  personal 
symbols.  The  sharing  of  a  sentiment  ordinarily 
comes  to  pass  by  our  perceiving  one  of  these  symbols 
or  traits  of  expression  which  has  belonged  with  the 
sentiment  in  the  past  and  now  brings  it  back.  And 
likewise  with  thought :  it  is  communicated  by  words, 
and  these  are  freighted  with  the  net  result  of  centu- 
ries of  intercourse.  Both  spring  from  the  general  life 
of  society  and  cannot  be  separated  from  that  life, 
nor  it  from  them. 

It  is  not  to  be  inferred  that  we  must  go  through 
the  same  visible  and  tangible  experiences  as  other 
people  before  we  can  sympathize  with  them.  On  the 
contrary,  there  is  only  an  indirect  and  uncertain  con- 
nection between  one's  sympathies  and  the  obvious 
events — such  as  the  death  of  friends,  success  or  fail- 
ure in  business,  travels,  and  the  like — that  one  has 
gone  through.  Social  experience  is  a  matter  of  im- 

105 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

aginative,  not  of  material,  contacts  ;  and  there  are  so 
many  aids  to  the  imagination  that  little  can  be 
judged  as  to  one's  experience  by  the  merely  external 
course  of  his  life.  An  imaginative  student  of  a  few 
people  and  of  books  often  has  many  times  the  range 
of  comprehension  that  the  most  varied  career  can 
give  to  a  duller  mind ;  and  a  man  of  genius,  like 
Shakespeare,  may  cover  almost  the  whole  range  of 
human  sentiment  in  his  time,  not  by  miracle,  but  by 
a  marvellous  vigor  and  refinement  of  imagination. 
The  idea  that  seeing  life  means  going  from  place  to 
place  and  doing  a  great  variety  of  obvious  things  is 
an  illusion  natural  to  dull  minds. 

One's  range  of  sympathy  is  a  measure  of  his  per- 
sonality, indicating  how  much  or  how  little  of  a  man 
he  is.  It  is  in  no  way  a  special  faculty,  but  a  func- 
tion of  the  whole  mind  to  which  every  special  faculty 
contributes,  \so  that  what  a  person  is  and  what  ho 
can  understand  or  enter  into  through  the  life  of 
others,  are  very  much  the  same  thing.  We  often 
hear  people  described  as  sympathetic  who  have  little 
mental  power,  but  are  of  a  sensitive,  impressionable, 
quickly  responsive  type  of  mind.  The  sympathy  of 
such  a  mind  always  has  some  defect  corresponding 
to  its  lack  of  character  and  of  constructive  force. 
A  strong,  deep  understanding  of  other  people  im- 
plies mental  energy  and  stability  ;  it  is  a  work  of 
persistent,  cumulative  imagination  which  may  be  as- 
sociated with  a  comparative  slowness  of  direct  sen- 

106 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

sibility.  On  the  other  hand,  we  often  see  the 
union  of  a  quick  sensitiveness  to  immediate  im- 
pressions with  an  inability  to  comprehend  what 
has  to  be  reached  by  reason  or  constructive  imagina- 
tion. 

Sympathy  is  a  requisite  to  social  power.  Only  in 
so  far  as  a  man  understands  other  people  and  thus 
enters  into  the  life  around  him  has  he  any  effective 
existence ;  the  less  he  has  of  this  the  more  he  is  a 
mere  animal,  not  truly  in  contact  with  human  life. 
And  if  he  is  not  in  contact  with  it  he  can  of  course 
have  no  power  over  it.  This  is  a  principle  of  famil- 
iar application,  and  yet  one  that  is  often  overlooked, 
practical  men  having,  perhaps,  a  better  grasp  of  it 
than  theorists.  It  is  well  understood  by  men  of  the 
world  that  effectiveness  depends  at  least  as  much 
upon  address,  savoir-faire,  tact,  and  the  like,  involv- 
ing sympathetic  insight  into  the  minds  of  other  peo- 
ple, as  upon  any  more  particular  faculties.  There  is 
nothing  more  practical  than  social  imagination  ;  to 
lack  it  is  to  lack  everything.  All  classes  of  persons 
need  it — the  mechanic,  the  farmer,  and  the  tradesman, 
as  well  as  the  lawyer,  the  clergyman,  the  railway  pres- 
ident, the  politician,  the  philanthropist,  and  the  poet. 
Every  year  thousands  of  young  men  are  preferred  to 
other  thousands  and  given  positions  of  more  responsi- 
bility largely  because  they  are  seen  to  have  a  power  of 
personal  insight  which  promises  efficiency  and  growth. 
Without  "calibre,"  which  means  chiefly  a  good  im- 
agination, there  is  no  getting  on  much  in  the  world. 

107 


The  strong  men  of  our  society,  however  much  we 
may  disapprove  of  the  particular  direction  in  which 
their  sympathy  is  sometimes  developed,  or  the  ends 
their  power  is  made  to  serve,  are  very  human  men, 
not  at  all  the  abnormal  creatures  they  are  sometimes 
asserted  to  be.  I  have  met  a  fair  number  of  such 
men,  and  they  have  generally  appeared,  each  in  his 
own  way,  to  be  persons  of  a  certain  scope  and 
breadth  that  marked  them  off  from  the  majority. 

A  person  of  definite  character  and  purpose,  who 
comprehends  our  way  of  thought,  is  sure  to  exert  power 
over  us.  He  cannot  altogether  be  resisted ;  because, 
if  he  understands  us,  he  can  make  us  understand  him, 
through  the  word,  the  look,  or  other  symbol,  which 
both  of  us  connect  with  the  common  sentiment  or 
idea  ;  and  thus  by  communicating  an  impulse  he  can 
move  the  will.  Sympathetic  influence  enters  into 
our  system  of  thought  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  af- 
fects our  conduct  as  surely  as  water  affects  the 
growth  of  a  plant.  The  kindred  spirit  can  turn  on 
a  system  of  lights,  to  recur  to  the  image  of  the  last 
chapter,  and  so  transform  the  mental  illumination. 
This  is  the  nature  of  all  authority  and  leadership, 
as  I  shall  try  to  explain  more  fully  in  another 
chapter. 

Again,  sympathy,  in  the  broad  sense  in  which  it  is 
here  used,  underlies  also  the  moral  rank  of  a  man  and 
goes  to  fix  our  estimate  of  his  justice  and  goodness. 
The  just,  the  good,  or  the  right  under  any  name,  is  of 
course  not  a  thing  by  itself,  but  is  a  finer  product 

108 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

wrought  up  out  of  the  various  impulses  that  life  af- 
fords, and  colored  by  them.  Hence  no  one  can  think 
and  act  in  a  way  that  strikes  us  as  right  unless  he  feels, 
in  great  part,  the  same  impulses  that  we  do.  If  he 
shares  the  feelings  that  seem  to  us  to  have  the  best 
claims,  it  naturally  follows,  if  he  is  a  person  of  stable 
character,  that  he  does  them  justice  in  thought  and  ac- 
tion. To  be  upright,  public-spirited,  patriotic,  charita-  | 
ble,  generous,  and  just  implies  that  a  man  has  a  broad 
personality  which  feels  the  urgency  of  sympathetic  or  I 
imaginative  motives  that  in  narrower  minds  are  weak 
or  lacking.  He  has  achieved  the  higher  sentiments, 
the  wider  range  of  personal  thought.  And  so  far  as 
we  see  in  his  conduct  that  he  feels  such  motives  and 
that  they  enter  into  his  decisions,  we  are  likely  to  call 
him  good.  What  is  it  to  do  good,  in  the  ordinary 
sense  ?  Is  it  not  to  help  people  to  enjoy  and  to  work, 
to  fulfil  the  healthy  and  happy  tendencies  of  human 
nature  ;  to  give  play  to  children,  education  to  youth, 
a  career  to  men,  a  household  to  women,  and  peace  to 
old  age  ?  And  it  is  sympathy  that  makes  a  man  wish 
and  need  to  do  these  things.  One  who  is  large 
enough  to  live  the  life  of  the  race  will  feel  the  im- 
pulses of  each  class  as  his  own,  and  do  what  he  can 
to  gratify  them  as  naturally  as  he  eats  his  dinner. 
The  idea  that  goodness  is  something  apart  from  or-  1 
dinary  human  nature  is  pernicious ;  it  is  only  an  \ 
ampler  expression  of  that  nature. 

On  the  other  hand,  all  badness,  injustice,  or  wrong 
is,  in  one  of  its  aspects,  a  lack  of  sympathy.     If  a 

109 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

man's  action  is  injurious  to  interests  which  other  men 
value,  and  so  impresses  them  as  wrong,  it  must  be 
because,  at  the  moment  of  action,  he  does  not  feel 
those  interests  as  they  do.  Accordingly  the  wrong- 
doer is  either  a  person  whose  sympathies  do  not  em- 
brace the  claims  he  wrongs,  or  one  who  lacks  sufficient 
stability  of  character  to  express  his  sympathies  in 
action.  A  liar,  for  instance,  is  either  one  who  does 
not  feel  strongly  the  dishonor,  injustice,  and  confusion 
of  lying,  or  one  who,  feeling  them  at  times,  does  not 
retain  the  feeling  in  decisive  moments.  And  so  a 
brutal  person  may  be  such  either  in  a  dull  or  chronic 
way,  which  does  not  know  the  gentler  sentiments  at 
any  time,  or  in  a  sudden  and  passionate  way  which 
perhaps  alternates  with  kindness. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  regarding  mental 
health  in  general ;  its  presence  or  absence  may  al- 
ways be  expressed  in  terms  of  sympathy.  The  test 
of  sanity  which  everyone  instinctively  applies  is  that 
of  a  certain  tact  or  feeling  of  the  social  situation, 
which  we  expect  of  all  right-minded  people  and  which 
flows  from  sympathetic  contact  with  other  minds. 
One  whose  words  and  bearing  give  the  impression 
that  he  stands  apart  and  lacks  intuition  of  what 
others  are  thinking  is  judged  as  more  or  less  absent- 
minded,  queer,  dull,  or  even  insane  or  imbecile,  ac- 
cording to  the  character  and  permanence  of  the  phe- 
nomenon. The  essence  of  insanity,  from  the  social 
point  of  view  (and,  it  would  seem,  the  only  final  test 
of  it)  is  a  confirmed  lack  of  touch  with  other  minds 

110 


in  matters  upon  which  men  in  general  are  agreed ; 
and  imbecility  might  be  defined  as  a  general  failure 
to  compass  the  more  complex  sympathies. 

A  man's  sympathies  as  a  whole  reflect  the  social 
order  in  which  he  livesr  or  rather  they  are  a  particu- 
lar phase  of  it.  Every  group  of  which  he  is  really  a 
member,  in  which  he  has  any  vital  share,  must  live 
in  his  sympathy  ;  so  that  his  mind  is  a  microcosm  of 
so  much  of  society  as  he  truly  belongs  to.  Every 
social  phenomenon,  we  need  to  remember,  is  simply 
a  collective  view  of  what  we  find  distributively  in 
particular  persons — public  opinion  is  a  phase  of  the 
judgments  of  individuals;  traditions  and  institutions 
live  in  the  thought  of  particular  men,  social  standards 
of  right  do  not  exist  apart  from  private  consciences, 
and  so  on.  Accordingly,  so  far  as  a  man  has  any 
vital  part  in  the  life  of  a  time  or  a  country  that  life 
is  imaged  in  those  personal  ideas  or  sympathies 
which  are  the  impress  of  his  intercourse. 

So,  whatever  is  peculiar  to  our  own  time,  implies 
a  corresponding  peculiarity  in  the  sympathetic  life 
of  each  one  of  us.  Thus  the  age,  at  least  in  the 
more  intellectually  active  parts  of  life,  is  strenuous, 
characterized  by  the  multiplication  of  points  of  per- 
sonal contact  through  enlarged  and  accelerated  com- 
munication. The  mental  aspect  of  this  is  a  more 
rapid  and  multitudinous  flow  of  personal  images, 
sentiments,  and  impulses.  Accordingly  there  pre- 
vails among  us  an  animation  of  thought  that  tends  to 

111 


lift  men  above  sensuality ;  and  there  is  also  possible 
a  choice  of  relations  that  opens  to  each  mind  a  more 
varied  and  congenial  development  than  the  past  af- 
forded. On  the  other  hand,  these  advantages  are  not 
without  their  cost ;  the  intensity  of  life  often  be- 
comes a  strain,  bringing  to  many  persons  an  over- 
excitation  which  weakens  or  breaks  down  character  ; 
as  we  see  in  the  increase  of  suicide  and  insanity, 
and  in  many  similar  phenomena.  An  effect  very 
generally  produced  upon  all  except  the  strongest 
minds  appears  to  be  a  sort  of  superficiality  of  imag- 
ination, a  dissipation  and  attenuation  of  impulses, 
which  watches  the  stream  of  personal  imagery  go  by 
like  a  procession,  but  lacks  the  power  to  organize 
and  direct  it. 

The  different  degrees  of  urgency  in  personal  im- 
pressions are  reflected  in  the  behavior  of  different 
classes  of  people.  Everyone  must  have  noticed  that 
he  finds  more  real  openness  of  sympathy  in  the  coun- 
try than  in  the  city — though  perhaps  there  is  more 
of  a  superficial  readiness  in  the  latter — and  often 
more  among  plain,  hand-working  people  than  among 
professional  and  business  men.  The  main  reason  for 
this,  I  take  it,  is  that  the  social  imagination  is  not  so 
hard  worked  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  In  the 
mountains  of  North  Carolina  the  hospitable  inhabi- 
tants will  take  in  any  stranger  and  invite  him  to 
spend  the  night;  but  this  is  hardly  possible  upon 
Broadway  ;  and  the  case  is  very  much  the  same  with 
the  hospitality  of  the  mind.  If  one  sees  few  people 

112 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

and  hears  a  new  thing  only  once  a  Week,  he  accumu- 
lates a  fund  of  sociability  and  curiosity  very  favorable 
to  eager  intercourse  ;  but  if  he  is  assailed  all  day  and 
every  day  by  calls  upon  feeling  and  thought  in  excess 
of  his  power  to  respond,  he  soon  finds  that  he  must 
put  up  some  sort  of  a  barrier.  Sensitive  people  who 
live  where  life  is  insistent  take  on  a  sort  of  social 
shell  whose  function  is  to  deal  mechanically  with  or- 
dinary relations  and  preserve  the  interior  from  de- 
struction. They  are  likely  to  acquire  a  conventional 
smile  and  conventional  phrases  for  polite  intercourse, 
and  a  cold  mask  for  curiosity,  hostility,  or  solicita- 
tion. In  fact,  a  vigorous  power  of  resistance  to  the 
numerous  influences  that  in  no  way  make  for  the 
substantial  development  of  his  character,  but  rather 
tend  to  distract  and  demoralize  him,  is  a  primary 
need  of  one  who  lives  in  the  more  active  portions  of 
present  society,  and  the  loss  of  this  power  by  strain 
is  in  countless  instances  the  beginning  of  mental  and 
moral  decline.  There  are  times  of  abounding  energy 
when  we  exclaim  with  Schiller, 

"  Seid  willkommen,  Millionen, 
Diesen  Kuss  der  ganzen  Welt !  " 

but  it  is  hardly  possible  or  desirable  to  maintain  this 
attitude  continuously.  Universal  sympathy  is  im- 
practicable ;  what  Ave  need  is  better  control  and  selec- 
tion, avoiding  both  the  narrowness  of  our  class  and 
the  dissipation  of  promiscuous  impressions.  It  is 
well  for  a  man  to  open  out  and  take  in  as  much  of 

113 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  OKDER 

life  as  he  can  organize  into  a  consistent  whole,  but  to 
go  beyond  that  is  not  desirable.  In  a  time  of  insist- 
ent suggestion,  like  the  present,  it  is  fully  as  impor- 
tant to  many  of  us  to  know  when  and  how  to  restrict 
the  impulses  of  sympathy  as  it  is  to  avoid  narrowness. 
And  this  is  in  no  way  inconsistent,  I  think,  with  that 
modern  democracy  of  sentiment — also  connected  with 
the  enlargement  of  communication — which  depre- 
cates the  limitation  of  sympathy  by  wealth  or  posi- 
tion. Sympathy  must  be  selective,  but  the  less  it 
is  controlled  by  conventional  and  external  circum- 
stances, such  as  wealth,  and  the  more  it  penetrates 
to  the  essentials-  of  character,  the  better.  It  is  this 
liberation  from  convention,  locality,  and  chance,  I 
think,  that  the  spirit  of  the  time  calls  for. 

Again,  the  life  of  this  age  is  more  diversified  than 
life  ever  was  before,  and  this  appears  in  the  mind  of 
the  person  who  shares  it  as  a  greater  variety  of  inter- 
ests and  affiliations.  A  man  may  be  regarded  as  the 
point  of  intersection  of  an  indefinite  number  of  circles 
representing  social  groups,  having  as  many  arcs  pass- 
ing through  him  as  there  are  groups.  This  diversity 
is  connected  with  the  growth  of  communication,  and  is 
another  phase  of  the  general  enlargement  and  varie- 
gation of  life.  Because  of  the  greater  variety  of 
imaginative  contacts  it  is  impossible  for  a  normally 
open-minded  individual  not  to  lead  a  broader  life,  in 
some  respects  at  least,  than  he  would  have  led  in 
the  past.  Why  is  it,  for  instance,  that  such  ideas  as 
brotherhood  and  the  sentiment  of  equal  right  are  now 

114 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

so  generally  extended  to  all  classes  of  men  ?  Primar- 
ily, I  think,  because  all  classes  have  become  imagi- 
nable, by  acquiring  power  and  means  of  expression. 
He  whom  I  imagine  without  antipathy  becomes  my 
brother.  If  we  feel  that  we  must  give  aid  to  another, 
it  is  because  that  other  lives  and  strives  in  our  imagi- 
nations, and  so  is  a  part  of  ourselves.  The  shallow 
separation  of  self  and  other  in  common  speech  ob- 
scures the  extreme  simplicity  and  naturalness  of  such 
feelings.  If  I  come  to  imagine  a  person  suffering 
wrong  it  is  not  "  altruism  "  that  makes  me  wish  to 
right  that  wrong,  but  simple  human  impulse.  He  is 
my  life,  as  really  and  immediately  as  anything  else. 
His  symbol  arouses  a  sentiment  which  is  no  more  his 
than  mine. 

Thus  we  lead  a  wider  life ;  and  yet  it  is  also  true 
that  there  is  demanded  of  us  a  more  distinct  special- 
ization than  has  been  required  in  the  past.  The  com- 
plexity of  society  takes  the  form  of  organization,  that 
is  of  a  growing  unity  and  breadth  sustained  by  the  co- 
operation of  differentiated  parts,  and  the  man  of  the 
age  must  reflect  both  the  unity  and  the  differentiation ; 
he  must  be  more  distinctly  a  specialist  and  at  the 
same  time  more  a  man  of  the  world. 

It  seems  to  many  a  puzzling  question  whether,  on 
the  whole,  the  breadth  or  the  specialization  is  more 
potent  in  the  action  of  modern  life  upon  the  individ- 
ual ;  and  by  insisting  on  one  aspect  or  the  other  it  is 
easy  to  frame  an  argument  to  show  either  that  per- 

115 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

sonal  life  is  becoming  richer,  or  that  man  is  getting 
to  be  a  mere  cog  in  a  machine.*  I  think,  however, 
that  these  two  tendencies  are  not  really  opposite  but 
complementary ;  that  it  is  not  a  case  of  breadth  versus 
specialization,  but,  in  the  long  run  at  least,  of  breadth 
plus  specialization  to  produce  a  richer  and  more 
various  humanity.  There  are  many  evils  connected 
with  the  sudden  growth  in  our  day  of  new  social 
structures,  and  the  subjection  of  a  part  of  the  people 
to  a  narrow  and  deadening  routine  is  one  of  them,  but 
I  think  that  a  healthy  specialization  has  no  tendency 
to  bring  this  about.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  part  of  a 
liberating  development.  The  narrow  specialist  is  a 
bad  specialist ;  and  we  shall  learn  that  it  is  a  mistake 
to  produce  him. 

In  an  organized  life  isolation  cannot  succeed,  and 
a  right  specialization  does  not  isolate.  There  is  no 
such  separation  between  special  and  general  knowl- 
edge or  efficiency  as  is  sometimes  supposed.  In 
what  does  the  larger  knowledge  of  particulars  consist 
4f  not  in  perceiving  their  relation  to  wholes  ?  Has  a 
student  less  general  knowledge  because  he  is  familiar 
with  a  specialty,  or  is  it  not  rather  true  that  in  so  far 
as  he  knows  one  thing  well  it  is  a  window  through 
which  he  sees  things  in  general  ? 

*  Much  of  what  is  ordinarily  said  in  this  connection  indicates  a 
confusion  of  the  two  ideas  of  specialization  and  isolation.  These 
are  not  only  different  but,  in  what  they  imply,  quite  opposite  and 
inconsistent.  Speciality  implies  a  whole  to  which  the  special  part 
has  a  peculiar  relation,  while  isolation  implies  that  there  is  no 
whole. 

116 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

There  is  no  way  to  penetrate  the  surface  of  life  but 
by  attacking  it  earnestly  at  a  particular  point.  If  one 
takes  his  stand  in  a  field  of  corn  when  the  young 
plants  have  begun  to  sprout,  all  the  plants  in  the  field 
will  appear  to  be  arranged  in  a  system  of  rows  radi- 
ating from  his  feet ;  and  no  matter  where  he  stands 
the  system  will  appear  to  centre  at  that  point.  It  is 
so  with  any  standpoint  in  the  field  of  thought  and  in- 
tercourse ;  to  possess  it  is  to  have  a  point  of  vantage 
from  which  the  whole  may,  in  a  particular  manner,  be 
apprehended.  It  is  surely  a  matter  of  common  ob-  , 
servation  that  a  man  who  knows  no  one  thing  inti- 
mately has  no  views  worth  hearing  on  things  in  gen- 
eral. The  farmer  philosophizes  in  terms  of  crops, 
soils,  markets,  and  implements,  the  mechanic  gener- 
alizes his  experience  of  wood  and  iron,  the  seaman 
reaches  similar  conclusions  by  his  own  special  road ; 
and  if  the  scholar  keeps  pace  with  these  it  must  be 
by  an  equally  virile  productivity.  It  is  a  common 
opinion  that  breadth  of  culture  is  a  thing  by  itself,  to 
be  imparted  by  a  particular  sort  of  studies,  as,  for 
instance,  the  classics,  modern  languages,  and  so  on. 
And  there  is  a  certain  practical  truth  in  this,  owing, 
I  think,  to  the  fact  that  certain  studies  are  taught  in 
a  broad  or  cultural  way,  while  others  are  not.  But 
the  right  theory  of  the  matter  is  that  speciality  and 
culture  are  simply  aspects  of  the  same  healthy  mental 
growth,  and  that  any  study  is  cultural  when  taught 
in  the  best  way.  And  so  the  humblest  careers  in  life 
may  involve  culture  and  breadth  of  view,  if  the  in- 

117 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

cumbent  is  trained,  as  he  should  be,  to  feel  their 
larger  relations. 

A  certain  sort  of  writers  often  assume  that  it  is  the 
tendency  of  our  modern  specialized  production  to 
stunt  the  mind  of  the  workman  by  a  meaningless  rou- 
tine ;  but  fair  opportunities  of  observation  and  some 
practical  acquaintance  with  machinery  and  the  men 
who  use  it  lead  me  to  think  that  this  is  not  the  gen- 
eral fact.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  precisely  the  broad 
or  cultural  traits  of  general  intelligence,  self-reliance, 
and  adaptability  that  make  a  man  at  home  and  ef- 
ficient in  the  midst  of  modern  machinery,  and  it  is 
because  the  American  workman  has  these  traits  in  a 
comparatively  high  degree  that  he  surpasses  others 
in  the  most  highly  specialized  production.  One  who 
goes  into  our  shops  will  find  that  the  intelligent  and 
adaptive  workman  is  almost  always  preferred  and 
gets  higher  wages;  and  if  there  are  large  numbers 
employed  upon  deadening  routine  it  is  partly  because 
there  is  unfortunately  a  part  of  our  population  whose 
education  makes  them  unfit  for  anything  else.  The 
type  of  mechanic  which  a  complex  industrial  system 
requires,  and  which  it  is  even  now,  on  the  whole, 
evolving,  is  one  that  combines  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  particular  tools  and  processes  with  an  intelligent 
apprehension  of  the  system  in  which  he  works.  If  he 
lacks  the  latter  he  requires  constant  oversight  and  so 
becomes  a  nuisance.  Anyone  acquainted  with  such 
matters  knows  that  "gumption"  in  workmen  is  fully 
as  important  and  much  harder  to  find  than  mere 

118 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

manual  skill ;  and  that  those  who  possess  it  are  usually 
given  superior  positions.  During  the  late  war  with 
Spain  it  became  obvious  that  the  complicated  machin- 
ery of  a  modern  warship  is  ineffectual  without  intel- 
ligent, self-reliant,  and  determined  "  men  behind  the 
guns  "  to  work  it ;  and,  of  course,  the  same  holds  true 
of  other  kinds  of  machinery.  And  if  we  pass  from 
tools  to  personal  relations  we  shall  find  that  the 
specialized  production  so  much  deprecated  is  only 
one  phase  of  a  wider  general  life,  a  life  of  comparative 
freedom,  intelligence,  education,  and  opportunity, 
whose  general  effect  is  to  enlarge  the  individual.  No 
doubt  there  are  cases  in  which  intelligence  seems  to 
have  passed  out  of  the  man  into  the  machine,  leaving 
the  former  a  mere  "  tender  "  ;  but  I  think  these  are 
not  representative  of  the  change  as  a  whole. 

The  idea  of  a  necessary  antagonism  between  spe- 
cialization and  breadth  seems  to  me  an  illusion  of 
the  same  class  as  that  which  opposes  the  individual 
to  the  social  order.  First  one  aspect  and  then  an- 
other is  looked  at  in  artificial  isolation,  and  it  is  not 
perceived  that  we  are  beholding  but  one  thing,  after  all. 

Not  only  does  the  sympathetic  life  of  a  man  re- 
flect and  imply  the  stale  of  society,  but  we  may  also 
discern  in  it  some  inkling  of  those  processes,  or  prin- 
ciples of  change,  that  we  see  at  large  in  the  general 
movement  of  mankind.  This  is  a  matter  rather  be- 
yond the  scope  of  this  book  ;  but  a  few  illustrations 
will  show,  in  a  general  way,  what  I  mean. 

119 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  act  of  sympathy  follows  the  general  law  that 
nature  works  onward  by  mixing  like  and  unlike,  con- 
tinuity and  change  ;  and  so  illustrates  the  same  prin- 
ciple that  we  see  in  the  mingling  of  heredity  with 
variation,  specific  resemblance  with  a  differentiation 
of  sexes  and  of  individuals,  tradition  with  discussion, 
inherited  social  position  with  competition,  and  so 
on.  The  likeness  in  the  communicating  persons  is 
necessary  for  comprehension,  the  difference  for  in- 
terest. We  cannot  feel  strongly  toward  the  totally 
unlike  because  it  is  unimaginable,  unrealizable ;  nor 
yet  toward  the  wholly  like  because  it  is  stale — iden- 
tity must  always  be  dull  company.  The  power  of 
other  natures  over  us  lies  in  a  stimulating  difference 
which  causes  excitement  and  opens  communication, 
in  ideas  similar  to  our  own  but  not  identical,  in 
states  of  mind  attainable  but  not  actual.  If  one  has 
energy  he  soon  wearies  of  any  habitual  round  of  ac- 
tivities and  feelings,  and  his  organism,  competent  to 
a  larger  life,  suffers  pains  of  excess  and  want  at  the 
same  time.  The  key  to  the  situation  is  another  per- 
son who  can  start  a  new  circle  of  activities  and  give 
the  faculties  concerned  with  the  old  a  chance  to  rest. 
As  Emerson  has  remarked,  we  come  into  society  to 
be  played  upon.  "  Friendship,"  he  says  again,  "  re- 
quires that  rare  mean  betAvixt  likeness  and  unlike- 
ness,  that  piques  each  with  the  presence  of  power 
and  of  consent  in  the  other  party.  .  .  .  Let  him 
not  cease  an  instant  to  be  himself.  The  only  joy  I 
have  in  his  being  mine  is  that  the  not  mine  is  mine. 

120 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

.  .  .  There  must  be  very  two  before  there  can 
be  very  one."  *  So  Goethe,  speaking  of  Spinoza's  at- 
traction for  him,  remarks  that  the  closest  unions  rest 
on  contrast ;  f  and  it  is  well  known  that  such  a  con- 
trast was  the  basis  of  his  union  with  Schiller,  "  whose 
character  and  life,"  he  says,  "  were  in  complete  con- 
trast to  my  own."  J  Of  course,  some  sorts  of  sym- 
pathy are  especially  active  in  their  tendency,  like 
the  sympathy  of  vigorous  boys  with  soldiers  and  sea- 
captains  ;  while  others  are  comparatively  quiet,  like 
those  of  old  people  renewing  common  memories.  It 
is  vivid  and  elastic  where  the  tendency  to  growth  is 
strong,  reaching  out  toward  the  new,  the  onward,  the 
mysterious ;  while  old  persons,  the  undervitalized 
and  the  relaxed  or  wearied  prefer  a  mild  sociability, 
a  comfortable  companionship  in  habit;  but  even 
with  the  latter  there  must  always  be  a  stimulus 
given,  something  new  suggested  or  something  for- 
gotten recalled,  not  merely  a  resemblance  of  thought 
but  a  "  resembling  difference." 

And  sympathy  between  man  and  woman,  while  it 
is  very  much  complicated  with  the  special  instinct  of 
sex,  draws  its  life  from  this  same  mixture  of  mental 
likeness  and  difference.  The  love  of  the  sexes  is 
above  all  a  need,  a  need  of  new  life  which  only  the 
other  can  unlock. 


*  See  his  Essay  on  Friendship. 

f  Lewes's  Life  of  Goethe,  vol.  i  ,  p.  282. 

J  Goethe,  Biographische  Einzelheiten,  Jacobi. 

121 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"  Ich  musst'  ihn  lieben,  well  mit  ihm  mein  Leben 
Zum  Leben  ward,  wie  ich  es  nie  gekannt,"  * 

says  the  princess  in  Tasso ;  and  this  appears  to  ex- 
press a  general  principle.  Each  sex  represents  to  the 
other  a  wide  range  of  fresh  and  vital  experience  in- 
accessible alone.  Thus  the  woman  usually  stands  for 
a  richer  and  more  open  emotional  life,  the  man  for  a 
stronger  mental  grasp,  for  control  and  synthesis. 
Alfred  without  Laura  feels  dull,  narrow,  and  coarse, 
while  Laura  on  her  part  feels  selfish  and  hysterical. 

Again,  sympathy  is  selective,  and  thus  illustrates  a 
phase  of  the  vital  process  more  talked  about  at  pres- 
ent than  any  other.  To  go  out  into  the  life  of  other 
people  takes  energy,  as  everyone  may  see  in  his  own 
experience  ;  and  since  energy  is  limited  and  requires 
some  special  stimulus  to  evoke  it,  sympathy  becomes 
active  only  when  our  imaginations  are  reaching  out 
after  something  we  admire  or  love,  or  in  some  way 
feel  the  need  to  understand  and  make  our  own.  A 
healthy  mind,  at  least,  does  not  spend  much  energy  on 
things  that  do  not,  in  some  way,  contribute  to  its  de- 
velopment :  ideas  and  persons  that  lie  wholly  aside 
from  the  direction  of  its  growth,  or  from  which  it  has 
absorbed  all  they  have  to  give,  necessarily  lack  inter- 
est for  it  and  so  fail  to  awaken  sympathy.  An  incon- 
tinent response  to  every  suggestion  offered  indicates 
the  breaking  down  of  that  power  of  inhibition  or  re- 

*  "  I  had  to  lore  him,  for  with  him  my  life  grew  to  such  life  as 
I  had  never  known." — Act  3,  sc.  2. 

122 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

fusal  that  is  our  natural  defence  against  the  reception 
of  material  we  cannot  digest,  and  looks  toward  weak- 
ness, instability,  and  mental  decay.  So  with  persons 
from  whom  we  have  nothing  to  gain,  in  any  sense, 
whom  we  do  not  admire,  or  love,  or  fear,  or  hate,  and 
who  do  not  even  interest  us  as  psychological  prob- 
lems or  objects  of  charity,  we  can  have  no  sympathy 
except  of  the  most  superficial  and  fleeting  sort.  I 
do  not  overlook  the  fact  that  a  large  class  of  people 
suffer  a  loss  of  human  breadth  and  power  by  falling 
into  a  narrow  and  exclusive  habit  of  mind ;  but  at  the 
same  time  personality  is  nothing  unless  it  has  char- 
acter, individuality,  a  distinctive  line  of  growth,  and 
to  have  this  is  to  have  a  principle  of  rejection  as  well 
as  reception  in  sympathy. 

Social  development  as  a  whole,  and  every  act  of 
sympathy  as  a  part  of  that  development,  is  guided 
and  stimulated  in  its  selective  growth  by  feeling. 
The  outgoing  of  the  mind  into  the  thought  of  another 
is  always,  it  would  seem,  an  excursion  in  search  of 
the  congenial ;  not  necessarily  of  the  pleasant,  in  the 
ordinary  sense,  but  of  that  which  is  fitting  or  con- 
gruous with  our  actual  state  of  feeling.  Thus  we 
would  not  call  Carlyle  or  the  Book  of  Job  pleasant 
exactly,  yet  we  have  moods  in  which  these  writers, 
however  lacking  in  amenity,  seem  harmonious  and 
attractive. 

In  fact,  our  mental  life,  individual  and  collective,  is 
truly  a  never  finished  work  of  art,  in  the  sense  that 
we  are  ever  striving,  with  such  energy  and  materials 

123 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

as  we  possess,  to  make  of  it  a  harmonious  and  con- 
genial whole.  Each  man  does  this  in  his  own  pecu- 
liar way,  and  men  in  the  aggregate  do  it  for  human 
nature  at  large,  each  individual  contributing  to  the 
general  endeavor.  There  is  a  tendency  to  judge 
every  new  influence,  as  the  painter  judges  every 
fresh  stroke  of  his  brush,  by  its  relation  to  the 
whole  achieved  or  in  contemplation,  and  to  call  it 
good  or  ill  according  to  whether  it  does  or  does  not 
make  for  a  congruous  development.  We  do  this  for 
the  most  part  instinctively,  that  is,  without  deliberate 
reasoning ;  something  of  the  whole  past,  hereditary 
and  social,  lives  in  our  present  state  of  mind,  and 
welcomes  or  rejects  the  suggestions  of  the  moment. 
There  is  always  some  profound  reason  for  the  eager- 
ness that  certain  influences  arouse  in  us,  through 
which  they  tap  our  energy  and  draw  us  in  their 
direction,  so  that  we  cling  to  and  augment  them, 
growing  more  and  more  in  their  sense.  Thus  if  one 
likes  a  book,  so  that  he  feels  himself  inclined  to  take 
it  down  from  time  to  time  and  linger  in  the  compan- 
ionship of  the  author,  he  may  be  sure  he  is  getting 
something  that  he  needs,  though  it  may  be  long 
before  he  discovers  what  it  is.  It  is  quite  evident 
that  there  must  be,  in  every  phase  of  mental  life,  an 
aesthetic  impulse  to  preside  over  selection. 

In  common  thought  and  speech  sympathy  and  love 
are  closely  connected ;  and  in  fact,  as  most  fre- 
quently used,  they  mean  somewhat  the  same  thing, 

124 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

the  sympathy  ordinarily  understood  being  an  affec- 
tionate sympathy,  and  the  love  a  sympathetic  affec- 
tion. I  have  already  suggested  that  sympathy  is 
not  dependent  upon  any  particular  emotion,  but 
may,  for  instance,  be  hostile  as  "well  as  friendly; 
and  it  might  also  be  shown  that  affection,  though 
it  stimulates  sympathy  and  so  usually  goes  with  it, 
is  not  inseparable  from  it,  but  may  exist  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  mental  development  which  true  sym- 
pathy requires.  Whoever  has  visited  an  institution 
for  the  care  of  idiots  and  imbeciles  must  have  been 
struck  by  the  exuberance  with  which  the  milk  of 
human  kindness  seems  to  flow  from  the  hearts  of 
these  creatures.  If  kept  quiet  and  otherwise  properly 
cared  for  they  are  mostly  as  amiable  as  could  be 
wished,  fully  as  much  so,  apparently,  as  persons  of 
normal  development ;  while  at  the  same  time  they 
offer  little  or  no  resistance  to  other  impulses,  such  as 
rage  and  fear,  that  sometimes  possess  them.  Kindli- 
ness seems  to  exist  primarily  as  an  animal  instinct,  so 
deeply  rooted  that  mental  degeneracy,  which  works 
from  the  top  down,  does  not  destroy  it  until  the  mind 
sinks  to  the  lower  grades  of  idiocy. 

However,  the  excitant  of  love,  in  all  its  finer 
aspects,  is  a  felt  possibility  of  communication,  a 
dawning  of  sympathetic  renewal.  We  grow  by  influ- 
ence, and  where  we  feel  the  presence  of  an  influence 
that  is  enlarging  or  uplifting,  we  begin  to  love.  Love 
is  the  normal  and  usual  accompaniment  of  the 
healthy  expansion  of  human  nature  by  communion ; 

125 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDEK 

and  in  turn  is  the  stimulus  to  more  communion.  It 
seems  not  to  be  a  special  emotion  in  quite  the  same 
way  that  anger,  grief,  fear,  and  the  like  are,  but 
something  more  primary  and  general,  the  stream, 
perhaps,  of  which  these  and  many  other  sentiments 
are  special  channels  or  eddies. 

/  Love  and  sympathy,  then,  are  two  things  which, 
|  though  distinguishable,  are  very  commonly  found 
together,  each  being  an  instigator  of  the  other ;  what 
we  love  we  sympathize  with,  so  far  as  our  mental 
development  permits.  To  be  sure,  it  is  also  true  that 
when  we  hate  a  person,  with  an  intimate,  imaginative, 
human  hatred,  we  enter  into  his  mind,  or  sympathize — 
any  strong  interest  will  arouse  the  imagination  and 
create  some  sort  of  sympathy — but  affection  is  a  more 
usual  stimulus. 

Love,  in  this  sense  of  kindly  sympathy,  may  have 
all  degrees  of  emotional  intensity  and  of  sympathetic 
penetration,  from  a  sort  of  passive  good-nature,  not 
involving  imagination  or  mental  activity  of  any  sort, 
up  to  an  all-containing  human  enthusiasm,  involving 
the  fullest  action  of  the  highest  faculties,  and  bring- 
ing with  it  so  strong  a  conviction  of  complete  good 
that  the  best  minds  have  felt  and  taught  that  God  is 
Love.  Thus  understood  it  is  not  any  specific  sort  of 
emotion,  at  least  not  that  alone,  but  a  general  out- 
flowing of  the  mind  and  heart,  accompanied  by  that 
gladness  that  the  fullest  life  carries  with  it.  When 
the  apostle  John  says  that  God  is  love,  and  that 
everyone  that  loveth  kuoweth  God,  he  evidently 

126 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

means  something  more  than  personal  affection,  some- 
thing that  knows  as  well  as  feels,  that  takes  account 
of  all  special  aspects  of  life  and  is  just  to  all. 

Ordinary  personal  affection  does  not  fill  our  ideal 
of  right  or  justice,  but  encroaches,  like  all  special  im- 
pulses. It  is  not  at  all  uncommon  to  wrong  one  per- 
son out  of  affection  for  another.  If,  for  instance,  I 
am  able  to  procure  a  desirable  position  for  a  friend, 
it  may  well  happen  that  there  is  another  and  a  fitter 
man,  whom  I  do  not  know  or  do  not  care  for,  from 
whose  point  of  view  my  action  is  an  injurious  abuse 
of  power.  It  is  evident  that  good  can  be  identi- 
fied with  no  simple  emotion,  but  must  be  sought 
in  some  wider  phase  of  life  that  embraces  all  points 
of  view.  So  far  as  love  approaches  this  comprehen- 
siveness it  tends  toward  justice,  because  the  claims 
of  all  live  and  are  adjusted  in  the  mind  of  him  who 
has  it. 

"Love's  hearts  are  faithful  but  not  fond, 
Bound  for  the  just  but  not  beyond." 

Thus  love  of  a  large  and  symmetrical  sort,  not  merely 
a  narrow  tenderness,  implies  justice  and  right,  since 
a  mind  that  has  the  breadth  and  insight  to  feel  this 
will  be  sure  to  work  out  magnanimous  principles  of 
conduct. 

It  is  in  some  such  sense  as  this,  as  an  expansion  of 
human  nature  into  a  wider  life,  that  I  can  best  under- 
stand the  use  of  the  word  love  in  the  writings  of  cer- 
tain great  teachers,  for  instance  in  such  passages  as 
the  following  * 

127 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"What  is  Love,  and  why  is  it  the  chief  good,  but  be- 
cause it  is  an  overpowering  enthusiasm.  .  .  .  He  who 
is  in  love  is  wise  and  is  becoming  wiser,  sees  newly  every 
time  he  looks  at  the  object  beloved,  drawing  from  it 
with  his  eyes  and  his  mind  those  virtues  which  it  pos- 
sesses." * 

' '  A  great  thing  is  love,  ever  a  great  good  ;  which  alone 
makes  light  all  the  heavy  and  bears  equally  every  in- 
equality. For  its  burden  is  not  a  burden,  and  it  makes 
every  bitter  sweet  and  savory.  .  .  .  Love  would  be 
arisen,  not  held  down  by  anything  base.  Love  would  be 
free,  and  alienated  from  every  worldly  affection,  that  its 
intimate  desire  may  not  be  hindered,  that  it  may  not  be- 
come entangled  through  any  temporal  good  fortune,  nor 
fall  through  any  ill.  There  is  nothing  sweeter  than  love, 
nothing  braver,  nothing  higher,  nothing  broader,  nothing 
joyfuller,  nothing  fuller  or  better  in  heaven  or  on  earth, 
since  love  is  born  of  God,  nor  can  rest  save  in  God  above  all 
created  things. 

"He  that  loves,  flies,  runs,  and  is  joyful ;  is  free  and  not 
restrained.  He  gives  all  for  all  and  has  all  in  all,  since  he 
is  at  rest  above  all  hi  the  one  highest  good  from  which 
every  good  flows  and  proceeds.  He  regards  not  gifts,  but 
beyond  all  good  things  turns  to  the  giver.  Love  oft  knows 
not  the  manner,  but  its  heat  is  more  than  every  manner. 
Love  feels  no  burden,  regards  not  labors,  strives  toward 
more  than  it  attains,  argues  not  of  impossibility,  since  it 
believes  that  it  may  and  can  all  things.  Therefore  it  avails 
for  all  things,  and  fulfils  and  accomplishes  much  where 
one  not  a  lover  falls  and  lies  helpless."  f 

The  sense  of  joy,  of  freshness,  of  youth,  and  of  the 
indifference  of  circumstances,  that  comes  with  love, 

*  Emerson,  Address  on  The  Method  of  Nature, 
f  De  Imitatione  Christi,  part  iii.,  chap.  5,  pars.  3  and  4. 
128 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

seems  to  be  connected  with  its  receptive,  outgoing 
nature.  It  is  the  fullest  life,  and  when  we  have  it 
we  feel  happy  because  our  faculties  are  richly  em- 
ployed; young  because  reception  is  the  essence  of 
youth,  and  indifferent  to  conditions  because  we  feel 
by  our  present  experience  that  welfare  is  independent 
of  them.  It  is  when  we  have  lost  our  hold  upon  this 
sort  of  happiness  that  we  begin  to  be  anxious  about 
security  and  comfort,  and  to  take  a  distrustful  and 
pessimistic  attitude  toward  the  world  in  general. 

In  the  literature  of  the  feelings  we  often  find  that 
love  and  self  are  set  over  against  each  other,  as  by 
Tennyson  when  he  says  : 

"  Love  took  up  the  harp  of  life  and  smote  on  all  the  chords 

with  might; 

Smote  the  chord  of  self,  that,  trembling,  passed  in  music 
out  of  sight." 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  whether,  or  in  what 
sense,  this  antithesis  is  a  just  one. 

As  regards  its  relation  to  self  we  may,  perhaps, 
distinguish  two  kinds  of  love,  one  of  which  is  mingled 
with  self-feeling  and  the  other  is  not.  The  latter  is  a  ' 
disinterested,  contemplative  joy,  in  feeling  which  the 
mind  loses  all  sense  of  its  private  existence ;  while  the 
former  is  active,  purposeful,  and  appropriative,  re- 
joicing in  its  object  with  a  sense  of  being  one  with  it 
as  against  the  rest  of  the  world. 

In  so  far  as  one  feels  the  disinterested  love,  that 
which  has  no  designs  with  reference  to  its  object,  he 

129 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

has  no  sense  of  "  I "  at  all,  but  simply  exists  in  some- 
thing to  which  he  feels  no  bounds.  Of  this  sort,  for 
instance,  seem  to  be  the  delight  in  natural  beauty,  in 
the  landscape  and  the  shining  sea,  the  joy  and  rest  of 
art — so  long  as  we  have  no  thought  of  production  or 
criticism — and  the  admiration  of  persons  regarding 
whom  we  have  no  intentions,  either  of  influence  or 
imitation.  It  appears  to  be  the  final  perfection  of 
this  unspecialized  joy  that  the  Buddhist  sages  seek 
in  Nirvana.  Love  of  this  sort  obliterates  that  idea 
of  separate  personality  whose  life  is  always  unsure 
and  often  painful.  One  who  feels  it  leaves  the  pre- 
carious self  ;  his  boat  glides  out  upon  a  wider  stream  ; 
he  forgets  his  own  deformity,  weakness,  shame  or 
failure,  or  if  he  thinks  of  them  it  is  to  feel  free  of 
them,  released  from  their  coil.  No  matter  what  you 
and  I  may  be,  if  we  can  comprehend  that  which  is 
fair  and  great  we  may  still  have  it,  may  transcend 
ourselves  and  go  out  into  it.  It  carries  us  beyond 
the  sense  of  all  individuality,  either  our  own  or 
others',  into  the  feeling  of  universal  and  joyous 
life.  The  "  I,"  the  specialized  self,  and  the  passions 
involved  with  it,  have  a  great  and  necessary  part  to 
play,  but  they  afford  no  continuing  city;  they  are  so 
evidently  transient  and  insecure  that  the  idealizing 
mind  cannot  rest  in  them,  and  is  glad  to  forget  them 
at  times  and  to  go  out  into  a  life  joyous  and  without 
bounds  in  which  thought  may  be  at  peace. 

But  love  that  plans  and  strives  is  always  in  some 
degree  self-love.     That  is,  self-feeling  is  correlated 

130 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

with,  individualized,  purposeful  thought  and  action, 
and  so  begins  to  spring  up  as  soon  as  love  lingers  upon 
something,  forms  intentions  and  begins  to  act.  The 
love  of  a  mother  for  her  child  is  appropriative,  as  is 
apparent  from  the  fact  that  it  is  capable  of  jealousy. 
Its  characteristic  is  not  selflessness,  by  any  means, 
but  the  association  of  self-feeling  with  the  idea  of 
her  child.  It  is  no  more  selfless  in  its  nature  than 
the  ambitions  of  a  man,  and  may  or  may  not  be 

— .. — f 

morally  superior ;  the  idea  that  it  involves  self-abne- 
gation seems  to  spring  from  the  crudely  material 
notion  of  personality  which  assumes  that  other  per- 
sons are  external  to  the  self.  And  so  of  all  productive, 
specialized  love.  I  shall  say  more  of  the  self  in  the 
next  chapter,  but  my  belief  is  that  it  is  impossible  to 
cherish  and  strive  for  special  purposes  without  hav- 
ing self-feeling  about  them  ;  without  becoming  more 
or  less  capable  of  resentment,  pride,  and  fear  regard- 
ing them.  The  imaginative  and  sympathetic  aims 
that  are  commonly  spoken  of  as  self-renunciation  are 
more  properly  an  enlargement  of  the  self,  and  by  no 
means  destroy,  though  they  may  transform,  the  "I." 
A  wholly  selfless  love  is  mere  contemplation,  an 
escape  from  conscious  speciality,  and  a  dwelling  in 
undifferentiated  life.  It  sees  all  things  as  one  and 
makes  no  effort. 

These  two  sorts  of  love  are  properly  complemen- 
tary, one  corresponding  to  production  and  giving 
each  of  us  a  specialized  intensity  and  effectiveness, 
while  in  the  other  we  find  enlargement  and  relief. 

131 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

They  are  indeed  closely  bound  together  and  each 
contributory  to  the  other.  The  self  and  the  special 
love  that  goes  with  it  seem  to  grow  by  a  sort  of 
crystallization  about  them  of  elements  from  the  wider 
life.  The  man  first  loves  the  woman  as  something 
transcendent,  divine,  or  universal,  which  he  dares  not 
think  of  appropriating ;  but  presently  he  begins  to 
claim  her  as  his  in  antithesis  to  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  to  have  hopes,  fears,  and  resentments  regarding 
her;  the  painter  loves  beauty  contemplatively,  and 
then  tries  to  paint  it ;  the  poet  delights  in  his  vis- 
ions, and  then  tries  to  tell  them,  and  so  on.  It  is 
necessary  to  our  growth  that  we  should  be  capable 
of  delighting  in  that  upon  which  we  have  no  designs, 
because  we  draw  our  fresh  materials  from  this  re- 
gion. The  sort  of  self-love  that  is  harmful  is  one 
that  has  hardened  about  a  particular  object  and 
ceased  to  expand.  On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  that 
the  power  to  enter  into  universal  life  depends  upon 
a  healthy  development  of  the  special  self.  "  Willst 
du  in's  Unendliche  schreiten,"  said  Goethe,  "  geh 
nur  im  Endlichen  nach  alien  Seiten."  That  which 
we  have  achieved  by  special,  selfful  endeavor  be- 
comes a  basis  of  inference  and  sympathy,  which 
gives  a  wider  reach  to  our  disinterested  contempla- 
tion. While  the  artist  is  trying  to  paint  he  forfeits 
the  pure  joy  of  contemplation ;  he  is  strenuous,  anx- 
ious, vain,  or  mortified ;  but  when  he  ceases  trying  he 
will  be  capable,  just  because  of  this  experience,  of  a 
fuller  appreciation  of  beauty  in  general  than  he  was 

132 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

before.  And  so  of  personal  affection ;  the  winning 
of  wife,  home,  and  children  involves  constant  self- 
assertion,  but  it  multiplies  the  power  of  sympathy. 
We  cannot,  then,  exalt  one  of  these  over  the  other ; 
what  would  seem  desirable  is  that  the  self,  without 
losing  its  special  purpose  and  vigor,  should  keep  ex- 
panding, so  that  it  should  tend  to  include  more  and 
more  of  what  is  largest  and  highest  in  the  general 
life. 

It  appears,  then,  that  sympathy,  in  the  sense  of 
mental  sharing  or  communication,  is  by  no  means  a 
simple  matter,  but  that  so  much  enters  into  it  as  to 
suggest  that  by  the  time  we  thoroughly  understood 
one  sympathetic  experience  we  should  be  in  a  way 
to  understand  the  social  order  itself.  An  act  of 
communication  is  a  particular  aspect  of  the  whole 
which  we  call  society,  and  necessarily  reflects  that  of 
which  it  is  a  characteristic  part.  To  come  into  touch 
with  a  friend,  a  leader,  an  antagonist,  or  a  book,  is 
an  act  of  sympathy ;  but  it  is  precisely  in  the  totality 
of  such  acts  that  society  consists.  Even  the  most 
complex  and  rigid  institutions  may  be  looked  upon 
as  consisting  of  innumerable  personal  influences  or 
acts  of  sympathy,  organized,  in  the  case  of  institu- 
tions, into  a  definite  and  continuing  whole  by  means 
of  some  system  of  permanent  symbols,  such  as  laws, 
constitutions,  sacred  writings,  and  the  like,  in  which 
personal  influences  are  preserved.  And,  turning  the 
matter  around,  we  may  look  upon  every  act  of  sym- 

133 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

pathy  as  a  particular  expression  of  the  history,  in- 
stitutions, and  tendencies  of  the  society  in  which  it 
takes  place.  Every  influence  which  you  or  I  can 
receive  or  impart  will  be  characteristic  of  the  race, 
the  country,  the  epoch,  in  which  our  personalities 
have  grown  up. 

The  main  thing  here  is  to  bring  out  the  vital  unity 
of  every  phase  of  personal  life,  from  the  simplest  in- 
terchange of  a  friendly  word  to  the  polity  of  nations 
or  of  hierarchies.  The  common  idea  of  the  matter 
is  crudely  mechanical — that  there  are  persons  as 
there  are  bricks  and  societies  as  there  are  walls.  A 
person,  or  some  trait  of  personality  or  of  intercourse, 
is  held  to  be  the  element  of  society,  and  the  latter  is 
formed  by  the  aggregation  of  these  elements.  Now 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  element  of  society  in  the 
sense  that  a  brick  is  the  element  of  a  wall ;  this  is 
a  mechanical  conception  quite  inapplicable  to  vital 
phenomena.  I  should  say  that  living  wholes  have 
aspects  but  not  elements. 

In  the  Capitoline  Museum  at  Borne  is  a  famous 
statue  of  Venus,  which,  like  many  works  of  this  kind, 
is  ingeniously  mounted  upon  a  pivot,  so  that  one 
who  wishes  to  study  it  can  place  it  at  any  angle  with 
reference  to  the  light  that  he  may  prefer.  Thus  he 
may  get  an  indefinite  number  of  views,  but  in  every 
view  what  he  really  observes,  so  far  as  he  observes 
intelligently,  is  the  whole  statue  in  a  particular  as- 
pect. Even  if  he  fixes  his  attention  upon  the  foot, 
or  the  great  toe,  he  sees  this  part,  if  he  sees  it  rightly, 

134 


COMMUNION  AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

in  relation  to  the  work  as  a  whole.  And  it  seerns 
to  me  that  the  study  of  human  life  is  analogous  in 
character.  It  is  expedient  to  divide  it  into  manage- 
able parts  in  some  way ;  but  this  division  can  only 
be  a  matter  of  aspects,  not  of  elements.  The  vari- 
ous chapters  of  this  book,  for  instance,  do  not  deal 
with  separable  subjects,  but  merely  with  phases  of  a 
common  subject,  and  the  same  is  true  of  any  work 
in  psychology,  history  or  biology. 


135 


CHAPTEE  V 
THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE   MEANING  OF   "I" 

THE  "  EMPIRICAL  SELF  " — "  I  "  AS  A  STATE  OF  FEELING — ITS 
RELATION  TO  THE  BODY — As  A  SENSE  OF  POWER  OR  CAUSA- 
TION— As  A  SENSE  OF  SPECIALITY  OR  DIFFERENTIATION  IN  A 
SOCIAL  LIFE — THE  REFLECTED  OR  LOOKING-GLASS  "  I  " — "  I " 
is  ROOTED  IN  THE  PAST  AND  VARIES  WITH  SOCIAL  CONDI- 
TIONS— ITS  RELATION  TO  HABIT — To  DISINTERESTED  LOVE — 
How  CHILDREN  LEARN  THE  MEANING  OF  "I " — THE  SPECU- 
LATIVE OR  METAPHYSICAL  "  I "  IN  CHILDREN — THE  LOOKING- 
GLASS  "I"  IN  CHILDREN — THE  SAME  IN  ADOLESCENCE — "I" 
IN  RELATION  TO  SEX — SIMPLICITY  AND  AFFECTATION — SOCIAL 
SELF-FEELING  is  UNIVERSAL. 

IT  is  well  to  say  at  the  outset  that  by  the  word 
"  self  "  in  this  discussion  is  meant  simply  that  which 
is  designated  in  common  speech  by  the  pronouns  of 
the  first  person  singular,  "  I,"  "  me,"  "  my,"  "  mine," 
and  "myself."  "Self"  and  "ego"  are  used  by 
metaphysicians  and  moralists  in  many  other  senses, 
more  or  less  remote  from  the  "  I "  of  daily  speech 
and  thought,  and  with  these  I  wish  to  have  as  little 
to  do  as  possible.  What  is  here  discussed  is  what  psy- 
chologists call  the  empirical  self,  the  self  that  can  be 
apprehended  or  verified  by  ordinary  observation.  I 
qualify  it  by  the  word  social  not  as  implying  the  ex- 
istence of  a  self  that  is  not  social — for  I  think  that 
the  "I"  of  common  language  always  has  more  or 

136 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

less  distinct  reference  to  other  people  as  well  as  the 
speaker — but  because  I  wish  to  emphasize  and  dwell 
upon  the  social  aspect  of  it. 

Although  the  topic  of  the  self  is  regarded  as  an 
abstruse  one  this  abstruseness  belongs  chiefly,  per- 
haps, to  the  metaphysical  discussion  of  the  "  pure 
ego" — whatever  that  may  be— while  the  empirical 
self  should  not  be  very  much  more  difficult  to  get 
hold  of  than  other  facts  of  the  mind.  At  any  rate,  it 
may  be  assumed  that  the  pronouns  of  the  first  person 
have  a  substantial,  important,  and  not  very  recondite 
meaning,  otherwise  they  would  not  be  in  constant  and 
intelligible  use  by  simple  people  and  young  children 
the  world  over.  And  since  they  have  such  a  meaning 
why  should  it  not  be  observed  and  reflected  upon  like 
any  other  matter  of  fact  ?  As  to  the  underlying  mys- 
tery, it  is  no  doubt  real,  important,  and  a  very  fit  sub- 
ject of  discussion  by  those  who  are  competent,  but  I 
do  not  see  that  it  is  a  peculiar  mystery.  I  mean  that 
it  seems  to  be  simply  a  phase  of  the  general  mystery 
of  life,  not  pertaining  to  "  I "  more  than  to  any  other 
personal  or  social  fact ;  so  that  here  as  elsewhere 
those  who  are  not  attempting  to  penetrate  the  mys- 
tery may  simply  ignore  it.  If  this  is  a  just  view  of 
the  matter,  "  I  "  is  merely  a  fact  like  any  other. 

The  distinctive  thing  in  the  idea  for  which  the  pro- 
nouns of  the  first  person  are  names  is  apparently  a 
characteristic  kind  of  feeling  which  may  be  called 
the  niy-f  eeling  or  sense  of  appropriation.  Almost  any 

137 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sort  of  ideas  may  be  associated  with  this  feeling,  and 
so  come  to  be  named  "I"  or  "mine,"  but  the  feeling, 
and  that  alone  it  would  seem,  is  the  determining  fac- 
tor in  the  matter.  As  Professor  James  says  in  his 
admirable  discussion  of  the  self,  the  words  "  me " 
and  "self"  designate  "all  the  things  which  have  the 
power  to  produce  in  a  stream  of  consciousness  excite- 
ment of  a  certain  peculiar  sort."  *  This  view  is  very 
fully  set  forth  by  Professor  Hiram  M.  Stanley,  whose 
work,  "  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling,"  has 
an  extremely  suggestive  chapter  on  self-feeling. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  feeling  aspect  of  the  self  is 
necessarily  more  important  than  any  other,  but  that 
it  is  the  immediate  and  decisive  sign  and  proof  of 
what  "  I "  is  ;  there  is  no  appeal  from  it ;  if  we  go 
behind  it  it  must  be  to  study  its  history  and  condi- 
tions, not  to  question  its  authority.  But,  of  course, 
this  study  of  history  and  conditions  may  be  quite  as 
profitable  as  the  direct  contemplation  of  self-feeling. 

*  "  The  words  ME,  then,  and  SELF,  no  far  as  they  arouse  feel- 
ing and  connote  emotional  worth,  are  OBJECTIVE  designations 
meaning  ALL  THE  THINGS  which  have  the  power  to  produce  in  a 
stream  of  consciousness  excitement  of  a  certain  peculiar  sort." 
Psychology,  i.,  p.  319.  A  little  earlier  he  says:  "  In  its  widest 
possible  sense,  however,  a  mans  self  is  the  sum  total  of  all  he 
CAN  call  /its,  not  only  his  body  and  his  psychic  powers,  but  his 
clothes  and  his  house,  his  wife  and  children,  his  ancestors  and 
friends,  his  reputation  and  works,  his  lands  and  horses  and  yacht 
and  bank-account.  All  these  things  give  him  the  same  emotions." 
Idem,  p.  291. 

So  Wundt  says  of  ",Ich  "  :  "  Es  ist  ein  Gefiihl,  nicht  eine  Vor- 
stellung.  wie  es  hating  genannt  wird."  Grundriss  der  Psychologic 
4  Anflage,  S.  265. 

138 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "  I " 

What  I  would  wish  to  do  is  to  present  each  aspect  in 
its  proper  light. 

The  emotion  or  feeling  of  self  may  be  regarded  as 
an  instinct,  doubtless  evolved  in  connection  with  its 
important  function  in  stimulatin  g  and  unifying  the 
special  activities  of  individuals.*  It  is  thus  very  pro- 
foundly rooted  in  the  history  of  the  human  race  and 
apparently  indispensable  to  any  plan  of  life  at  all 
similar  to  ours.  It  seems  to  exist  in  a  vague  though 
vigorous  form  at  the  birth  of  each  individual,  and, 
like  other  instinctive  ideas  or  germs  of  ideas,  to  be 
defined  and  developed  by  experience,  becoming  associ- 
ated, or  rather  incorporated,  with  muscular,  visual  and 
other  sensations ;  with  perceptions,  apperceptions  and 
conceptions  of  every  degree  of  complexity  and  of  in- 
finite variety  of  content ;  and,  especially,  with  personal 
ideas.  Meantime  the  feeling  itself  does  not  remain 
unaltered,  but  undergoes  differentiation  and  refine- 
ment just  as  does  any  other  sort  of  crude  innate  feel- 
ing. Thus,  while  retaining  under  every  phase  its  char- 
acteristic tono  or  flavor,  it  breaks  up  into  innumerable 
self-sentiments.  And  concrete  self -feeling,  as  it  exists 
in  mature  persons,  is  a  whole  made  up  of  these  vari- 
ous sentiments,  along  with  a  good  deal  of  primitive 
emotion  not  thus  broken  up.  It  partakes  fully  of  the 
general  development  of  the  mind,  but  never  loses  that 
peculiar  gusto  of  appropriation  that  causes  us  to  name 

*  It  is,  perhaps,  to  be  thought  of  as  a  more  general  instinct,  of 
which  anger,  etc.,  are  differentiated  forms,  rather  than  as  standing 
by  itself. 

139 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

a  thought  with  a  first-personal  pronoun.  The  other 
contents  of  the  self-idea  are  of  little  use,  apparently, 
in  defining  it,  because  they  are  so  extremely  various. 
It  would  be  no  more  futile,  it  seems  to  me,  to  attempt 
to  define  fear  by  enumerating  the  things  that  people 
are  afraid  of,  than  to  attempt  to  define  "  I "  by  enu- 
merating the  objects  with  which  the  word  is  associ- 
ated. Very  much  as  fear  means  primarily  a  state  of 
feeling,  or  its  expression,  and  not  darkness,  fire,  lions, 
snakes,  or  other  things  that  excite  it,  so  "  I "  means 
primarily  self-feeling,  or  its  expression,  and  not  body, 
clothes,  treasures,  ambition,  honors,  and  the  like,  with 
which  this  feeling  may  be  connected.  In  either  case 
it  is  possible  and  useful  to  go  behind  the  feeling  and 
enquire  what  ideas  arouse  it  and  why  they  do  so,  but 
this  is  in  a  sense  a  secondary  investigation. 

Since  "  I "  is  known  to  our  experience  primarily 
as  a  feeling,  or  as  a  feeling-ingredient  in  our  ideas, 
it  cannot  be  described  or  defined  without  suggesting 
that  feeling.  We  are  sometimes  likely  to  fall  into  a 
formal  and  empty  way  of  talking  regarding  questions 
of  emotion,  by  attempting  to  define  that  which  is  in 
its  nature  primary  and  indefinable.  A  formal  defi- 
nition of  self-feeling,  or  indeed  of  any  sort  of  feeling, 
must  be  as  hollow  as  a  formal  definition  of  the  taste 
of  salt,  or  the  color  red  ;  we  can  expect  to  know 
what  it  is  only  by  experiencing  it.  There  can  be  no 
final  test  of  the  self  except  the  way  we  feel ;  it  is 
that  toward  which  we  have  the  "  my  "  attitude.  But 
as  this  feeling  is  quite  as  familiar  to  us  and  as  easy  to 

140 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

recall  as  the  taste  of  salt  or  the  color  red,  there 
should  be  no  difficulty  in  understanding  what  is 
meant  by  it.  One  need  only  imagine  some  attack  on 
his  "  me,"  say  ridicule  of  his  dress  or  an  attempt  to 
take  away  his  property  or  his  child,  or  his  good  name 
by  slander,  and  self-feeling  immediately  appears.  In- 
deed, he  need  only  pronounce,  with  strong  emphasis, 
one  of  the  self- words,  like  "  I "  or  "  my,"  and  self- 
feeling  will  be  recalled  by  association.  Another  good 
way  is  to  enter  by  sympathy  into  some  self-assertive 
state  of  mind  depicted  in  literature ;  as,  for  instance, 
into  that  of  Coriolanus  when,  having  been  sneered  at 
as  a  "  boy  of  tears,"  he  cries  out : 

"Boy  !  .  .  . 

If  you  have  writ  your  annals  'true,  'tis  there, 
That,  like  an  eagle  in  a  dovecote,  I 
Fluttered  your  Volscians  in  Corioli ; 
Alone  I  did  it.— Boy  !  " 

Here  is  a  self  indeed,  which  no  one  can  fail  to  feel, 
though  he  might  be  unable  to  describe  it.  What  a 
ferocious  scream  of  the  outraged  ego  is  that  "I"  at 
the  end  of  the  second  line  ! 

So  much  is  written  on  this  topic  that  ignores  self- 
feeling  and  thus  deprives  "  self  "  of  all  vivid  and  pal- 
pable meaning,  that  I  feel  it  permissible  to  add  a  few 
more  passages  in  which  this  feeling  is  forcibly  ex- 
pressed. Thus  in  Lowell's  poem,  "  A  Glance  Be- 
hind the  Curtain,"  Cromwell  says  : 

"  I,  perchance, 

Am  one  raised  up  by  the  Almighty  arm 
To  witness  some  great  truth  to  all  the  world, " 
141 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

And  his  Columbus,  on  the  bow  of  his  vessel,  solilo- 
quizes : 

"  Here  am  I,  with  no  friend  but  the  sad  sea, 
The  beating  heart  of  this  great  enterprise, 
Which,  without  me,  would  stiffen  in  swift  death." 

And  so  the  "  I  am  the  way  "  which  we  read  in  the 
New  Testament  is  surely  the  expression  of  a  senti- 
ment not  very  different  from  these.  In  the  following 
we  have  a  more  plaintive  sentiment  of  self : 

Philoctetes. — And  know'st  thou  not,  O  hoy,  whom  thou 

dost  see? 

ffeoptolemtts. — How  can  I  know  a  man  I  ne'er  beheld  ? 
Philoctetes. — And  didst  thou  never  hear  my  name,  nor 

fame 

Of  these  my  ills,  in  which  I  pined  away  ? 
Neoptolemus. — Know  that  I  nothing  know  of  what  thou 

ask'st. 

Philoctetes. — O  crushed  with  many  woes,  and  of  the  Gods 
Hated  am  I,  of  whom,  in  this  my  woe, 
No  rumor  travelled  homeward,   nor  went 

forth 
Through  any  clime  of  Hellas.  * 

We  all  have  thoughts  of  the  same  sort  as  these, 
and  yet  it  is  possible  to  talk  so  coldly  or  mystically 
about  the  self  that  one  begins  to  forget  that  there  is, 
really,  any  such  thing. 

But  perhaps  the  best  way  to  realize  the  naive 
meaning  of  "  I  "  is  to  listen  to  the  talk  of  children 
playing  together,  especially  if  they  do  not  agree  very 
well.  They  use  the  first  person  with  none  of  the 

*  Plumptre'a  Sophocles,  p.  352. 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

conventional  self-repression  of  their  elders,  but  with 
much  emphasis  and  variety  of  inflection,  so  that  its 
emotional  animus  is  unmistakable. 

Self-feeling  of  a  reflective  and  agreeable  sort,  an 
appropriative  zest  of  contemplation,  is  strongly  sug- 
gested by  the  word  "gloating."  To  gloat,  in  this  sense, 
is  as  much  as  to  think  "  mine,  mine,  mine,"  with  a 
pleasant  warmth  of  feeling.  Thus  a  boy  gloats  over 
something  he  has  made  with  his  scroll-saw,  over  the 
bird  he  has  brought  down  with  his  gun,  or  over  his 
collection  of  stamps  or  eggs ;  a  girl  gloats  over  her 
new  clothes,  and  over  the  approving  words  or  looks 
of  others  ;  a  farmer  over  his  fields  and  his  stock ;  a 
business  man  over  his  trade  and  his  bank-account ; 
a  mother  over  her  child  ;  the  poet  over  a  successful 
quatrain  ;  the  self-righteous  man  over  the  state  of 
his  soul;  and  in  like  manner  everyone  gloats  over 
the  prosperity  of  any  cherished  idea. 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  saying  that  self-feel- 
ing is  clearly  marked  off  in  experience  from  other 
kinds  of  feeling;  but  it  is,  perhaps,  as  definite  in 
this  regard  as  anger,  fear,  grief,  and  the  like.  To 
quote  Professor  James,  "  The  emotions  themselves 
of  self-satisfaction  and  abasement  are  of  a  unique 
sort,  each  as  worthy  to  be  classed  as  a  primitive 
emotional  species  as  are,  for  example,  rage  or  pain."  * 
It  is  true  here,  as  wherever  mental  facts  are  distin- 
guished, that  there  are  no  fences,  but  that  one  thing 
merges  by  degrees  into  another.  Yet  if  "  I "  did  not 

"  Psychology,  i.,  p.  307. 
143 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

denote  an  idea  much  the  same  in  all  minds  and  fairly 
distinguishable  from  other  ideas,  it  could  not  be  used 
freely  and  universally  as  a  means  of  communication. 

As  many  people  have  the  impression  that  the  veri- 
fiable self,  the  object  that  we  name  with  "I,"  is 
usually  the  material  body,  it  may  be  well  to  say 
that  this  impression  is  an  illusion,  easily  dispelled 
by  anyone  who  will  undertake  a  simple  examina- 
tion of  facts.  It  is  true  that  when  we  philoso- 
phize a  little  about  "  I "  and  look  around  for  a 
tangible  object  to  which  to  attach  it,  we  soon  fix 
upon  the  material  body  as  the  most  available  locus  ; 
but  when  we  use  the  word  naively,  as  in  ordinary 
speech,  it  is  not  very  common  to  think  of  the  body 
in  connection  with  it ;  not  nearly  so  common  as  it  is 
to  think  of  other  things.  There  is  no  difficulty  in 
testing  this  statement,  since  the  word  "  I "  is  one  of 
the  commonest  in  conversation  and  literature,  so  that 
nothing  is  more  practicable  than  to  study  its  mean- 
ing at  any  length  that  may  be  desired.  One  need 
only  listen  to  ordinary  speech  until  the  word  has  oc- 
curred, say,  a  hundred  times,  noting  its  connections, 
or  observe  its  use  in  a  similar  number  of  cases  by  the 
characters  in  a  novel.  Ordinarily  it  will  be  found 
that  in  not  more  than  ten  cases  in  a  hundred  does 
"  I "  have  reference  to  the  body  of  the  person  speak- 
ing. It  refers  chiefly  to  opinions,  purposes,  desires, 
claims,  and  the  like,  concerning  matters  that  involve 
no  thought  of  the  body.  1  think  or  feel  so  and  so ; 

U4 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

/  wish  or  intend  so  and  so ;  /  want  this  or  that ;  are 
typical  uses,  the  self-feeling  being  associated  with 
the  view,  purpose,  or  object  mentioned.  It  should 
also  be  remembered  that  "  my  "  and  "  mine  "  are  as 
much  the  names  of  the  self  as  "  I "  and  these,  of 
course,  commonly  refer  to  miscellaneous  possessions. 
I  had  the  curiosity  to  attempt  a  rough  classifica- 
tion of  the  first  hundred  "  I's "  and  "  me's "  in 
Hamlet,  with  the  following  results.  The  pronoun  was 
used  in  connection  with  perception,  as  "  I  hear,"  "  I 
see,"  fourteen  times ;  with  thought,  sentiment,  inten- 
tion, etc.,  thirty -two  times ;  with  wish,  as  "  I  pray 
you,"  six  times ;  as  speaking — "  I'll  speak  to  it " — six- 
teen times ;  as  spoken  to,  twelve  times ;  in  connection 
with  action,  involving  perhaps  some  vague  notion 
of  the  body,  as  "  I  came  to  Denmark,"  nine  times ; 
vague  or  doubtful,  ten  times ;  as  equivalent  to  bodily 
appearance — "No  more  like  my  father  than  I  to 
Hercules " — once.  Some  of  the  classifications  are 
arbitrary,  and  another  observer  would  doubtless  get 
a  different  result ;  but  he  could  not  fail,  I  think,  to 
conclude  that  Shakespeare's  characters  are  seldom 
thinking  of  their  bodies  when  they  say  "  I "  or  "  me." 
And  in  this  respect  they  appear  to  be  representative 
of  mankind  in  general. 

As  already  suggested,  instinctive  self-feeling  is 
doubtless  connected  in  evolution  with  its  important 
function  in  stimulating  and  unifying  the  special  ac- 
tivities of  individuals.  It  appears  to  be  associated 

145 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

chiefly  with  ideas  of  the  exercise  of  power,  of  being  a 
cause,  ideas  that  emphasize  the  antithesis  between 
the  mind  and  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  first  defi- 
nite thoughts  that  a  child  associates  with  self-feeling 
are  probably  those  of  his  earliest  endeavors  to  con- 
trol visible  objects — his  limbs,  his  playthings,  his 
bottle,  and  the  like.  Then  he  attempts  to  control 
the  actions  of  the  persons  about  him,  and  so  his  cir- 
cle of  power  and  of  self-feeling  widens  without  inter- 
ruption to  the  most  complex  objects  of  mature  am- 
bition. Although  he  does  not  say  "  I "  or  "  my " 
during  the  first  year  or  two,  yet  he  expresses  so 
clearly  by  his  actions  the  feeling  that  adults  associ- 
ate with  these  words  that  we  cannot  deny  him  a  self 
even  in  the  first  weeks. 

The  correlation  of  self-feeling  with  purposeful  ac- 
tivity is  easily  seen  by  observing  the  course  of  any 
productive  enterprise.  If  a  boy  sets  about  making  a 
boat,  and  has  any  success,  his  interest  in  the  matter 
waxes,  he  gloats  over  it,  the  keel  and  stem  are  dear 
to  his  heart,  and  its  ribs  are  more  to  him  than  those 
of  his  own  frame.  He  is  eager  to  call  in  his  friends 
and  acquaintances,  saying  to  them,  "  See  what  I  am 
doing !  Is  it  not  remarkable  ?  ",  feeling  elated  when 
it  is  praised,  and  resentful  or  humiliated  when  fault 
is  found  with  it.  But  so  soon  as  he  finishes  it  and 
turns  to  something  else,  his  self-feeling  begins  to 
fade  away  from  it,  and  in  a  few  weeks  at  most  he 
will  have  become  comparatively  indifferent.  We  all 
know  that  much  the  same  course  of  feeling  accom- 

146 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

parries  the  achievements  of  adults.  It  is  impossible 
to  produce  a  picture,  a  poem,  an  essay,  a  difficult  bit 
of  masonry,  or  any  other  work  of  art  or  craft,  without 
having  self-feeling  regarding  it,  amounting  usually  to 
considerable  excitement  and  desire  for  some  sort  of 
appreciation;  but  this  rapidly  diminishes  with  the 
activity  itself,  and  often  lapses  into  indifference  after 
it  ceases. 

It  may  perhaps  be  objected  that  the  sense  of  self, 
instead  of  being  limited  to  times  of  activity  and  defi- 
nite purpose,  is  often  most  conspicuous  when  the 
mind  is  unoccupied  or  undecided,  and  that  the  idle  and 
ineffectual  are  commonly  the  most  sensitive  in  their 
self-esteem.  This,  however,  may  be  regarded  as  an 
instance  of  the  principle  that  all  instincts  are  likely 
to  assume  troublesome  forms  when  denied  whole- 
some expression.  The  need  to  exert  power,  when 
thwarted  in  the  open  fields  of  life,  is  the  more  likely 
to  assert  itself  in  trifles. 

The  social  self  is  simply  any  idea,  or  system 
of  ideas,  drawn  from  the  communicative  life,  that 
the  mind  cherishes  as  its  own.  Self-feeling  has 
its  chief  scope  within  the  general  life,  not  out- 
side of  it,  the  special  endeavor  or  tendency  of 
which  it  is  the  emotional  aspect  finding  its  princi- 
pal field  of  exercise  in  a  world  of  personal  forces, 
reflected  in  the  mind  by  a  world  of  personal  im- 
pressions. 

As  connected  with  the  thought  of  other  persons  it 
147 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  always  a  consciousness  of  the  peculiar  or  differen- 
tiated aspect  of  one's  life,  because  that  is  the  aspect 
that  has  to  be  sustained  by  purpose  and  endeavor, 
and  its  more  aggressive  forms  tend  to  attach  them- 
selves to  whatever  one  finds  to  be  at  once  congenial 
to  one's  own  tendencies  and  at  variance  with  those  of 
others  with  whom  one  is  in  mental  contact.  It  is 
here  that  they  are  most  needed  to  serve  their  func- 
tion of  stimulating  characteristic  activity,  of  foster- 
ing those  personal  variations  which  the  general  plan 
of  life  seems  to  require.  Heaven,  says  Shakespeare, 
doth  divide 

"The  state  of  man  in  divers  functions, 
Setting  endeavor  in  continual  motion," 

and  self-feeling  is  one  of  the  means  by  which  this 
diversity  is  achieved. 

Agreeably  to  this  view  we  find  that  the  aggressive 
self  manifests  itself  most  conspicuously  in  an  appro- 
priativeness  of  objects  of  common  desire,  corre- 
sponding to  the  individual's  need  of  power  over  such 
objects  to  secure  his  own  peculiar  development,  and 
to  the  danger  of  opposition  from  others  who  also  need 
them.  And  this  extends  from  material  objects  to  lay 
hold,  in  the  same  spirit,  of  the  attentions  and  affec- 
tions of  other  people,  of  all  sorts  of  plans  and  ambi- 
tions, including  the  noblest  special  purposes  the 
mind  can  entertain,  and  indeed  of  any  conceivable 
idea  which  may  come  to  seem  a  part  of  one's  life 
and  in  need  of  assertion  against  someone  else.  The 

148 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

attempt  to  limit  the  word  self  and  its  derivatives 
to  the  lower  aims  of  personality  is  quite  arbitrary  ; 
at  variance  with  common  sense  as  expressed  by  the 
emphatic  use  of  "  I "  in  connection  with  the  sense  of 
duty  and  other  high  motives,  and  unphilosophical  as 
ignoring  the  function  of  the  self  as  the  organ  of  spe- 
cialized endeavor  of  higher  as  well  as  lower  kinds. 

That  the  "  I "  of  common  speech  has  a  meaning 
which  includes  some  sort  of  reference  to  other  per- 
sons is  involved  in  the  very  fact  that  the  word  and 
the  ideas  it  stands  for  are  phenomena  of  language 
and  the  communicative  life.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
it  is  possible  to  use  language  at  all  without  thinking 
more  or  less  distinctly  of  someone  else,  and  cer- 
tainly the  things  to  which  we  give  names  and  which 
have  a  large  place  in  reflective  thought  are  almost 
always  those  which  are  impressed  upon  us  by  our 
contact  with  other  people.  "Where  there  is  no  com- 
munication there  can  be  no  nomenclature  and  no 
developed  thought.  What  we  call  "  me,"  "  mine,"  or 
"  myself  "  is,  then,  not  something  separate  from  the 
general  life,  but  the  most  interesting  part  of  it,  a  part 
whose  interest  arises  from  the  very  fact  that  it  is  both 
general  and  individual.  That  is,  we  care  for  it  just 
because  it  is  that  phase  of  the  mind  that  is  living  and 
striving  in  the  common  life,  trying  to  impress  it- 
self upon  the  minds  of  others.  "  I "  is  a  militant 
social  tendency,  working  to  hold  and  enlarge  its  place 
in  the  general  current  of  tendencies.  So  far  as  it  can 
it  waxes,  as  all  life  does.  To  think  of  it  as  apart 

149 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

from  society  is  a  palpable  absurdity  of  which  no  one 
could  be  guilty  who  really  saw  it  as  a  fact  of  life. 

"  Der  Mensch  erkennt  sich  nur  im  Menschen,  nur 
Das  Leben  lehret  jedem  was  er  sei. "  * 

If  a  thing  has  no  relation  to  others  of  which  one 
is  conscious  he  is  unlikely  to  think  of  it  at  all,  and  if 
he  does  think  of  it  he  cannot,  it  seems  to  me,  regard 
it  as  emphatically  his.  The  appropriative  sense  is 
always  the  shadow,  as  it  were,  of  the  common  life, 
and  when  we  have  it  we  have  a  sense  of  the  latter  in 
connection  with  it.  Thus,  if  we  think  of  a  secluded 
part  of  the  woods  as  "  ours,"  it  is  because  we  think, 
also,  that  others  do  not  go  there.  As  regards  the 
body  I  doubt  if  we  have  a  vivid  my-f eeling  about  any 
part  of  it  which  is  not  thought  of,  however  vaguely, 
as  having  some  actual  or  possible  reference  to  some- 
one else.  Intense  self-consciousness  regarding  it 
arises  along  with  instincts  or  experiences  which  con- 
nect it  with  the  thought  of  others.  Internal  organs, 
like  the  liver,  are  not  thought  of  as  peculiarly  ours 
unless  we  are  trying  to  communicate  something  re- 
garding them,  as,  for  instance,  when  they  are  giving 
us  trouble  and  we  are  trying  to  get  sympathy. 

"  I,"  then,  is  not  all  of  the  mind,  but  a  peculiarly 
central,  vigorous,  and  well-knit  portion  of  it,  not  sep- 
arate from  the  rest  but  gradually  merging  into  it, 
and  yet  having  a  certain  practical  distinctness,  so 

*  "  Only  in  man  does  man  know  himself  ;  life  alone  teaches  each 
one  what  he  is." — Goethe,  Tasso,  act  2,  sc.  3. 

150 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "  I " 

that  a  man  generally  shows  clearly  enough  by  his 
language  and  behavior  what  his  "  I "  is  as  distin- 
guished from  thoughts  he  does  not  appropriate.  It 
may  be  thought  of,  as  already  suggested,  under  the 
analogy  of  a  central  colored  area  on  a  lighted  wall. 
It  might  also,  and  perhaps  more  justly,  be  compared 
to  the  nucleus  of  a  living  cell,  not  altogether  separate 
from  the  surrounding  matter,  out  of  which  indeed  it 
is  formed,  but  more  active  and  definitely  organized. 

The  reference  to  other  persons  involved  in  the 
sense  of  self  may  be  distinct  and  particular,  as  when 
a  boy  is  ashamed  to  have  his  mother  catch  him  at 
something  she  has  forbidden,  or  it  may  be  vague  and 
general,  as  when  one  is  ashamed  to  do  something 
which  only  his  conscience,  expressing  his  sense  of 
social  responsibility,  detects  and  disapproves  ;  but  it 
is  always  there.  There  is  no  sense  of  "  I,"  as  in 
pride  or  shame,  without  its  correlative  sense  of  you, 
or  he,  or  they.  Even  the  miser  gloating  over  his 
hidden  gold  can  feel  the  "  mine  "  only  as  he  is  aware 
of  the  world  of  men  over  whom  he  has  secret  power  ; 
and  the  case  is  very  similar  with  all  kinds  of  hid 
treasure.  Many  painters,  sculptors,  and  writers  have 
loved  to  withhold  their  work  from  the  world,  fond- 
ling it  in  seclusion  until  they  were  quite  done  with 
it ;  but  the  delight  in  this,  as  in  all  secrets,  depends 
upon  a  sense  of  the  value  of  what  is  concealed. 

In  a  very  large  and  interesting  class  of  cases  the 
social  reference  takes  the  form  of  a  somewhat  defi- 

151 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nite  imagination  of  how  one's  self — that  is  any  idea 
he  appropriates — appears  in  a  particular  mind,  and 
the  kind  of  self-feeling  one  has  is  determined  by  the 
attitude  toward  this  attributed  to  that  other  mind. 
A  social  self  of  this  sort  might  be  called  the  reflect- 
ed or  looking-glass  self : 

"  Each  to  each  a  looking-glass 
Reflects  the  other  that  doth  pass." 

As  we  see  our  face,  figure,  and  dress  in  the  glass,  and 
are  interested  in  them  because  they  are  ours,  and 
pleased  or  otherwise  with  them  according  as  they  do 
or  do  not  answer  to  what  we  should  like  them  to  be  ; 
so  in  imagination  we  perceive  in  another's  mind 
some  thought  of  our  appearance,  manners,  aims, 
deeds,  character,  friends,  and  so  on,  and  are  various- 
ly affected  by  it. 

A  self-idea  of  this  sort  seems  to  have  three  prin- 
cipal elements  :  the  imagination  of  our  appearance  to 
the  other  person  ;  the  imagination  of  his  judgment  of 
that  appearance,  and  some  sort  of  self -feeling,  such  as 
pride  or  mortification.  The  comparison  with  a  look- 
ing-glass hardly  suggests  the  second  element,  the  im- 
agined judgment,  which  is  quite  essential.  The  thing 
that  moves  us  to  pride  or  shame  is  not  the  mere 
mechanical  reflection  of  ourselves,  but  an  imputed 
sentiment,  the  imagined  effect  of  this  reflection  upon 
another's  mind.  This  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
the  character  and  weight  of  that  other,  in  whose 
mind  we  see  ourselves,  makes  all  the  difference 

152 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

with  our  feeling.  We  are  ashamed  to  seem  evasive 
in  the  presence  of  a  straightforward  man,  cowardly 
in  the  presence  of  a  brave  one,  gross  in  the  eyes 
of  a  refined  one,  and  so  on.  We  always  imagine, 
and  in  imagining  share,  the  judgments  of  the  other 
mind.  A  man  will  boast  to  one  person  of  an  ac- 
tion— say  some  sharp  transaction  in  trade — which  he 
would  be  ashamed  to  own  to  another. 

It  should  be  evident  that  the  ideas  that  are  associ- 
ated with  self-feeling  and  form  the  intellectual  con- 
tent of  the  self  cannot  be  covered  by  any  simple  de- 
scription, as  by  saying  that  the  body  has  such  a  part 
in  it,  friends  such  a  part,  plans  so  much,  etc.,  but 
will  vary  indefinitely  with  particular  temperaments 
and  environments.  The  tendency  of  the  self,  like 
every  aspect  of  personality,  is  expressive  of  far-reach- 
ing hereditary  and  social  factors,  and  is  not  to  be  un- 
derstood or  predicted  except  in  connection  with  the 
general  life.  Although  special,  it  is  in  no  way  sepa- 
rate— speciality  and  separateness  are  not  only  differ- 
ent but  contradictory,  since  the  former  implies  con- 
nection with  a  whole.  The  object  of  self-feeling  is 
affected  by  the  general  course  of  history,  by  the  par- 
ticular development  of  nations,  classes,  and  profes- 
sions, and  other  conditions  of  this  sort. 

The  truth  of  this  is  perhaps  most  decisively  shown 
in  the  fact  that  even  those  ideas  that  are  most  gener- 
ally associated  or  colored  with  the  "  my  "  feeling,  such 
as  one's  idea  of  his  visible  person,  of  his  name,  his 

153 


HITMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

family,  his  intimate  friends,  his  property,  and  so  on, 
are  not  universally  so  associated,  but  may  be  separated 
from  the  self  by  peculiar  social  conditions.  Thus  the 
ascetics,  who  have  played  so  large  a  part  in  the  his- 
tory of  Christianity  and  of  other  religions  and  philoso- 
phies, endeavored  not  without  success  to  divorce  their 
appropriative  thought  from  all  material  surroundings, 
and  especially  from  their  physical  persons,  which  they 
sought  to  look  upon  as  accidental  and  degrading  cir 
cumstances  of  the  soul's  earthly  sojourn.  In  thus 
estranging  themselves  from  their  bodies,  from  prop- 
erty and  comfort,  from  domestic  affections — whether 
of  wife  or  child,  mother,  brother  or  sister — and  from 
other  common  objects  of  ambition,  they  certainly 
gave  a  singular  direction  to  self-feeling,  but  they 
did  not  destroy  it :  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
instinct,  which  seems  imperishable  so  long  as  mental 
vigor  endures,  found  other  ideas  to  which  to  attach 
itself;  and  the  strange  and  uncouth  forms  which 
ambition  took  in  those  centuries  when  the  solitary, 
filthy,  idle,  and  sense-tormenting  anchorite  was  a 
widely  accepted  ideal  of  human  life,  are  a  matter  of 
instructive  study  and  reflection.  Even  in  the  high- 
est exponents  of  the  ascetic  ideal,  like  St.  Jerome, 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  discipline,  far  from  effacing 
the  self,  only  concentrated  its  energy  in  lofty  and 
unusual  channels.  The  self-idea  may  be  that  of 
some  great  moral  reform,  of  a  religious  creed,  of  the 
destiny  of  one's  soul  after  death,  or  even  a  cherished 
conception  of  the  deity.  Thus  devout  writers,  like 

154 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "  I " 

George  Herbert  and  Thomas  a  Kempis,  often  address 
my  God,  not  at  all  conventionally  as  I  conceive  the 
matter,  but  with  an  intimate  sense  of  appropriation. 
And  it  has  been  observed  that  the  demand  for  the 
continued  and  separate  existence  of  the  individual 
soul  after  death  is  an  expression  of  self -feeling,  as  by 
J.  A.  Symonds,  who  thinks  that  it  is  connected  with 
the  intense  egotism  and  personality  of  the  European 
races,  and  asserts  that  the  millions  of  Buddhism 
shrink  from  it  with  horror.* 

Habit  and  familiarity  are  not  of  themselves  suffi- 
cient to  cause  an  idea  to  be  appropriated  into  the 
self.  Many  habits  and  familiar  objects  that  have 
been  forced  upon  us  by  circumstances  rather  than 
chosen  for  their  congeniality  remain  external  and  pos- 
sibly repulsive  to  the  self ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  novel  but  very  congenial  element  in  experience,  like 
the  idea  of  a  new  toy,  or,  if  you  please,  Romeo's  idea 
of  Juliet,  is  often  appropriated  almost  immediately, 
and  becomes,  for  the  time  at  least,  the  very  heart  of 
the  self.  Habit  has  the  same  fixing  and  consolidating 
action  in  the  growth  of  the  self  that  it  has  elsewhere, 
but  is  not  its  distinctive  characteristic. 

As  suggested  in  the  previous  chapter,  self-feeling,  - 
may  be  regarded  as  in  a  sense  the  antithesis,  or  bet- 
ter perhaps,  the  complement,  of  that  disinterested  and 
contemplative  love  that  tends  to  obliterate  the  sense 

*  John  Addington  Symonds,  by  H.  F.  Brown,  vol.  ii.  p.  120. 
155 


IM.A  • 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  a  divergent  individuality.  Love  of  this  sort  has  no 
sense  of  bounds,  but  is  what  we  feel  when  we  are  ex- 
panding and  assimilating  new  and  indeterminate  ex- 
perience, while  self-feeling  accompanies  the  appro- 
priating, delimiting,  and  defending  of  a  certain  part 
of  experience ;  the  one  impels  us  to  receive  life,  the 
other  to  individuate  it.  The  self,  from  this  point 
of  view,  might  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  citadel  of  the 
mind,  fortified  without  and  containing  selected  treas- 
ures within,  while  love  is  an  undivided  share  in  the 
rest  of  the  universe.  In  a  healthy  mind  each  con- 
tributes to  the  growth  of  the  other :  what  we  love  in. 
tensely  or  for  a  long  time  we  are  likely  to  bring  within 
the  citadel,  and  to  assert  as  part  of  ourself.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  only  on  the  basis  of  a  substantial 
self  that  a  person  is  capable  of  progressive  sympathy 
or  love. 

The  sickness  of  either  is  to  lack  the  support  of  the 
other.  There  is  no  health  in  a  mind  except  as  it 
keeps  expanding,  taking  in  fresh  life,  feeling  love  and 
enthusiasm ;  and  so  long  as  it  does  this  its  self- feeling 
is  likely  to  be  modest  and  generous ;  since  these  sen- 
timents accompany  that  sense  of  the  large  and  the 
superior  which  love  implies.  But  if  love  closes,  the 
self  contracts  and  hardens :  the  mind  having  nothing 
else  to  occupy  its  attention  and  give  it  that  change 
and  renewal  it  requires,  busies  itself  more  and  more 
with  self-feeling,  which  takes  on  narrow  and  dis- 
gusting forms,  like  avarice,  arrogance,  and  fatuity. 
It  is  necessary  that  we  should  have  self-feeling 

156 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  « I " 

about  a  matter  during  its  conception  and  execution ; 
but  when  it  is  accomplished  or  lias  failed  the  self 
ought  to  break  loose  and  escape,  renewing  its  skin 
like  the  snake,  as  Thoreau  says.  No  matter  what  a 
man  does,  he  is  not  fully  sane  or  human  unless  there 
is  a  spirit  of  freedom  in  him,  a  soul  unconfmed  by 
purpose  and  larger  than  the  practicable  world.  And 
this  is  really  what  those  mean  who  inculcate  the  sup- 
pression of  the  self ;  they  mean  that  its  rigidity  must 
be  broken  up  by  growth  and  renewal,  that  it  must  be 
more  or  less  decisively  "  born  again."  A  healthy 
self  must  be  both  vigorous  and  plastic,  a  nucleus  of 
solid,  well-knit  private  purpose  and  feeling,  guided 
and  nourished  by  sympathy. 

The  view  that  "  self  "  and  the  pronouns  of  the  first 
person  are  names  which  the  race  has  learned  to  apply 
to  an  instinctive  attitude  of  mind,  and  which  each 
child  in  turn  learns  to  apply  in  a  similar  way,  was 
impressed  upon  me  by  observing  my  child  M.  at  the 
time  when  she  was  learning  to  use  these  pronouns. 
When  she  was  two  years  and  two  weeks  old  I  was 
surprised  to  discover  that  she  had  a  clear  notion  of 
the  first  and  second  persons  when  used  possessively. 
When  asked,  "  Where  is  your  nose?  "  she  would  put 
her  hand  upon  it  and  say  "my."  She  also  under- 
stood that  when  someone  else  said  "  my  "  and  touched 
an  object,  it  meant  something  opposite  to  what  was 
meant  when  she  touched  the  same  object  and  used 
the  same  word.  Now,  anyone  who  will  exercise  his 

157 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

imagination  upon  the  question  how  this  matter  must 
appear  to  a  mind  having  no  means  of  knowing  any- 
thing about  "  I "  and  "  my  "  except  what  it  learns  by 
hearing  them  used,  will  see  that  it  should  be  very 
puzzling.  Unlike  other  words,  the  personal  pronouns 
have,  apparently,  no  uniform  meaning,  but  convey 
different  and  even  opposite  ideas  when  employed  by 
different  persons.  It  seems  remarkable  that  children 
should  master  the  problem  before  they  arrive  at  con- 
siderable power  of  abstract  reasoning.  How  should 
a  little  girl  of  two,  not  particularly  reflective,  have 
discovered  that  "  my  "  was  not  the  sign  of  a  definite 
object  like  other  words,  but  meant  something  differ- 
ent with  each  person  who  used  it?  And,  still  more 
surprising,  how  should  she  have  achieved  the  correct 
use  of  it  with  reference  to  herself  which,  it  would 
seem,  could  not  be  copied  from  anyone  else,  simply 
because  no  one  else  used  it  to  describe  what  be- 
longed to  her  ?  The  meaning  of  words  is  learned  by 
associating  them  with  other  phenomena.  But  how  is 
it  possible  to  learn  the  meaning  of  one  which,  as  used 
by  others,  is  never  associated  with  the  same  phenom- 
enon as  when  properly  used  by  one's  self  ?  Watch- 
ing her  use  of  the  first  person,  I  was  at  once  struck 
with  the  fact  that  she  employed  it  almost  wholly  in  a 
possessive  sense,  and  that,  too,  when  in  an  aggressive, 
self-assertive  mood.  It  was  extremely  common  to 
see  B.  tugging  at  one  end  of  a  plaything  and  M. 
at  the  other,  screaming,  "  My,  my."  "  Me  "  was 
sometimes  nearly  equivalent  to  "  my,"  and  was  also 

158 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

employed  to  call  attention  to  herself  when  she  wanted 
something  done  for  her.  Another  common  use  of 
"  my"  was  to  demand  something  she  did  not  have  at 
all.  Thus  if  R.  had  something  the  like  of  which  she 
wanted,  say  a  cart,  she  would  exclaim,  "  Where's  my 
cart?" 

It  seemed  to  me  that  she  might  have  learned  the 
use  of  these  pronouns  about  as  follows.  The  self- 
feeling  had  always  been  there.  From  the  first  week 
she  had  wanted  things  and  cried  and  fought  for  them. 
She  had  also  become  familiar  by  observation  and 
opposition  with  similar  appropriative  activities  on 
the  part  of  R,.  Thus  she  not  only  had  the  feeling 
herself,  but  by  associating  it  with  its  visible  expres- 
sion had  probably  divined  it,  sympathized  with  it, 
resented  it,  in  others.  Grasping,  tugging,  and  scream- 
ing would  be  associated  with  the  feeling  in  her  own 
case  and  would  recall  the  feeling  when  observed  in 
others.  They  would  constitute  a  language,  precedent 
to  the  use  of  first-personal  pronouns,  to  express  the 
self-idea.  All  was  ready,  then,  for  the  word  to  name 
this  experience.  She  now  observed  that  R.,  when 
contentiously  appropriating  something,  frequently 
exclaimed,  "  my"  "  mine"  "  give  it  to  me"  "  I  want 
it,"  and  the  like.  Nothing  more  natural,  then,  than 
that  she  should  adopt  these  words  as  names  for  a 
frequent  and  vivid  experience  with  which  she  was 
already  familiar  in  her  own  case  and  had  learned  to 
attribute  to  others.  Accordingly  it  appeared  to  me, 
as  I  recorded  in  my  notes  at  the  time,  that  " '  rny '  and 

159 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

'  mine  '  are  simply  names  for  concrete  images  of  ap- 
propriativeness,"  embracing  both  the  appropriative 
feeling  and  its  manifestation.  If  this  is  true  the  child 
does  not  at  first  work  out  the  I-and-you  idea  in  an 
abstract  form.  The  first-personal  pronoun  is  a  sign 
of  a  concrete  thing  after  all,  but  that  thing  is  not 
primarily  the  child's  body,  or  his  muscular  sen- 
sations as  such,  but  the  phenomenon  of  aggressive 
appropriation,  practised  by  himself,  witnessed  in 
others,  and  incited  and  interpreted  by  a  hereditary 
instinct.  This  seems  to  get  over  the  difficulty  above 
mentioned,  namely,  the  seeming  lack  of  a  common 
content  between  the  meaning  of  "  my  "  when  used  by 
another  and  when  used  by  one's  self.  This  common 
content  is  found  in  the  appropriative  feeling  and  the 
visible  and  audible  signs  of  that  feeling.  An  ele- 
ment of  difference  and  strife  comes  in,  of  course,  in 
the  opposite  actions  or  purposes  which  the  "my" 
of  another  and  one's  own  "  my  "  are  likely  to  stand 
for.  When  another  person  says  "  mine  "  regarding 
something  which  I  claim,  I  sympathize  with  him 
enough  to  understand  what  he  means,  but  it  is  a 
hostile  sympathy,  overpowered  by  another  and  more 
vivid  "  mine  "  connected  with  the  idea  of  drawing  the 
object  my  way. 

In  other  words,  the  meaning  of  "I"  and  "mine  " 
is  learned  in  the  same  way  that  the  meanings  of 
hope,  regret,  chagrin,  disgust,  and  thousands  of  other 
words  of  emotion  and  sentiment  are  learned :  that  is, 
by  having  the  feeling,  imputing  it  to  others  in  con- 

160 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  « 1 " 

nection  with  some  kind  of  expression,  and  hearing 
the  word  along  with  it.  As  to  its  communication 
and  growth  the  self-idea  is  in  no  way  peculiar  that  I 
see,  but  essentially  like  other  ideas.  In  its  more 
complex  forms,  such  as  are  expressed  by  "  I "  in  con- 
versation and  literature,  it  is  a  social  sentiment, 
or  type  of  sentiments,  defined  and  developed  by  in-i 
tercourse,  in  the  manner  suggested  in  a  previous 
chapter. 

B.,  though  a  more  reflective  child  than  M.,  was 
much  slower  in  understanding  these  pronouns,  and 
in  his  thirty-fifth  month  had  not  yet  straightened 
them  out,  sometimes  calling  his  father  "  me."  I  im- 
agine that  this  was  partly  because  he  was  placid 
and  uncontentious  in  his  earliest  years,  manifesting 
little  social  self-feeling,  but  chiefly  occupied  with  im- 
personal experiment  and  reflection ;  and  partly  because 
he  saw  little  of  other  children  by  antithesis  to  whom 
his  self  could  be  awakened.  M.,  on  the  other  hand, 
coming  later,  had  B.'s  opposition  on  which  to  whet 
her  naturally  keen  appropriativeness.  And  her  so- 
ciety had  a  marked  effect  in  developing  self-feeling 
in  B.,  who  found  self-assertion  necessary  to  preserve 
his  playthings,  or  anything  else  capable  of  appro- 
priation. He  learned  the  use  of  "  my,"  however, 
when  he  was  about  three  years  old,  before  M.  was 
born.  He  doubtless  acquired  it  in  his  dealings  with 
his  parents.  Thus  he  would  perhaps  notice  his 
mother  claiming  the  scissors  as  mine  and  seizing 
upon  them,  and  would  be  moved  sympathetically  to 

1G1 


claim  something  in  the  same  way — connecting  the 
word  with  the  act  and  the  feeling  rather  than  the 
object.  But  as  I  had  not  the  problem  clearly  in 
mind  at  that  time  I  made  no  satisfactory  observa- 
tions. 

I  imagine,  then,  that  as  a  rule  the  child  associates 
"  I "  and  "  me  "  at  first  only  with  those  ideas  regard- 
ing which  his  appropriative  feeling  is  aroused  and 
defined  by  opposition.  He  appropriates  his  nose, 
eye,  or  foot  in  very  much  the  same  way  as  a  play- 
thing— by  antithesis  to  other  noses,  eyes,  and  feet, 
which  he  cannot  control.  It  is  not  uncommon  to 
tease  little  children  by  proposing  to  take  away  one 
of  these  organs,  and  they  behave  precisely  as  if 
the  "mine"  threatened  were  a  separable  object — 
which  it  might  be  for  all  they  know.  And,  as  I  have 
suggested,  even  in  adult  life,  "  I,"  "  me,"  and  "  mine  " 
are  applied  with  a  strong  sense  of  their  meaning 
only  to  things  distinguished  as  peculiar  to  us  by 
some  sort  of  opposition  or  contrast.  They  always 
imply  social  life  and  relation  to  other  persons.  That 
which  is  most  distinctively  mine  is  very  private,  it 
is~brue,  but  it  is  that  part  of  the  private  which  I  am 
cherishing  in  antithesis  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  not 
the  separate  but  the  special.  The  aggressive  self  is 
essentially  a  militant  phase  of  the  mind,  having  for 
its  apparent  function  the  energizing  of  peculiar  activ- 
ities, and  although  the  militancy  may  not  go  on  in 
an  obvious,  external  manner,  it  always  exists  as  a 
mental  attitude. 

162 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

In  some  of  the  best-known  discussions  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  sense  of  self  in  children  the  chief 
emphasis  has  been  placed  upon  the  speculative  or 
quasi-metaphysical  ideas  concerning  "  I  "  which  chil- 
dren sometimes  formulate  as  a  result  either  of  ques- 
tions from  their  elders,  or  of  the  independent 
development  of  a  speculative  instinct.  The  most 
obvious  result  of  these  inquiries  is  to  show  that  a 
child,  when  he  reflects  upon  the  self  in  this  manner, 
usually  locates  "  I  "  in  the  body.  Interesting  and  im- 
portant as  this  juvenile  metaphysics  is,  as  one  phase 
of  mental  development,  it  should  certainly  not  be 
taken  as  an  adequate  expression  of  the  childish  sense 
of  self,  and  probably  President  G.  Stanley  Hall,  who 
has  collected  valuable  material  of  this  kind,  does 
not  so  take  it.*  This  analysis  of  the  "I,"  asking 
one's  self  just  where  it  is  located,  whether  particular 
limbs  are  embraced  in  it,  and  the  like,  is  somewhat 
remote  from  the  ordinary,  naive  use  of  the  word,  with 
children  as  with  grown  people.  In  my  own  children 
I  only  once  observed  anything  of  this  sort,  and  that 
was  in  the  case  of  E..,  when  he  was  struggling  to 
achieve  the  correct  use  of  his  pronouns ;  and  a  futile, 
and  as  I  now  think  mistaken,  attempt  was  made  to 
help  him  by  pointing  out  the  association  of  the  word 
with  his  body.  On  the  other  hand,  every  child  who 
has  learned  to  talk  uses  "  I,"  "  me,"  "  mine,"  and  the 
like  hundreds  of  times  a  day,  with  great  emphasis, 

*  Compare  Some  Aspects  of  the  Early  Sense  of  Self,  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  ix.,  p  351. 

163 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

in  the  simple,  naive  way  that  the  race  has  used  them 
for  thousands  of  years.  In  this  usage  they  refer  to 
claims  upon  playthings,  to  assertions  of  one's  pecu- 
liar will  or  purpose,  as  "  I  don't  want  to  do  it  that 
way,"  "7  am  going  to  draw  a  kitty,"  and  so  on, 
rarely  to  any  part  of  the  body.  And  when  a  part  of 
the  body  is  meant  it  is  usually  by  way  of  claiming 
approval  for  it,  as  "  Don't  I  look  nice  ?  "  so  that  the 
object  of  chief  interest  is  after  all  another  person's 
attitude.  The  speculative  "I,"  though  a  true  "I,"  is 
not  the  "I  "  of  common  speech  and  workaday  useful- 
ness, but  almost  as  remote  from  ordinary  thought  as 
the  ego  of  metaphysicians,  of  which,  indeed,  it  is  an 
immature  example. 

That  children,  when  in  this  philosophizing  state 
of  mind,  usually  refer  "  I "  to  the  physical  body,  is 
easily  explained  by  the  fact  that  their  materialism, 
natural  to  all  crude  speculation,  needs  to  locate  the 
self  somewhere,  and  the  body,  the  one  tangible  thing 
over  which  they  have  continuous  power,  seems  the 
most  available  home  for  it. 

The  process  by  which  self-feeling  of  the  looking- 
glass  sort  develops  in  children  may  be  followed 
without  much  difficulty.  Studying  the  movements  of 
others  as  closely  as  they  do  they  soon  see  a  connec- 
tion between  their  own  acts  and  changes  in  those 
movements ;  that  is,  they  perceive  their  own  influence 
yor  power  over  persons.  The  child  appropriates  the 
\visible  actions  of  his  parent  or  nurse,  over  which  he 

104 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

finds  he  has  some  control,  in  quite  the  same  way  as 
he  appropriates  one  of  his  own  members  or  a  play- 
thing, and  he  will  try  to  do  things  with  this  new 
possession,  just  as  he  will  with  his  hand  or  his  rat- 
tle. A  girl  six  months  old  will  attempt  in  the  most 
evident  and  deliberate  manner  to  attract  attention 
to  herself,  to  set  going  by  her  actions  some  of  those 
movements  of  other  persons  that  she  has  appropri- 
ated. She  has  tasted  the  joy  of  being  a  cause,  of 
exerting  social  power,  and  wishes  more  of  it.  She 
will  tug  at  her  mother's  skirts,  wriggle,  gurgle, 
stretch  out  her  arms,  etc.,  all  the  time  watching  for 
the  hoped-for  effect.  These  performances  often  give 
the  child,  even  at  this  age,  an  appearance  of  what  is 
called  affectation,  that  is  she  seems  to  be  unduly 
preoccupied  with  what  other  people  think  of  her. 
Affectation,  at  any  age,  exists  when  the  passion  to  in- 
fluence others  seems  to  overbalance  the  established 
character  and  give  it  an  obvious  twist  or  pose.  It 
is  instructive  to  find  that  even  Darwin  was,  in  his 
childhood,  capable  of  departing  from  truth  for  the 
sake  of  making  an  impression.  "  For  instance,"  he 
says  in  his  autobiography,  "  I  once  gathered  much 
valuable  fruit  from  my  father's  trees  and  hid  it  in 
the  shrubbery,  and  then  ran  in  breathless  haste  to 
spread  the  news  that  I  had  discovered  a  hoard  of 
stolen  fruit."  * 

The  young  performer  soon  learns  to  be  different 
things  to  different  people,  showing  that  he  begins  to 
*  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  by  F.  Darwin,  p.  27. 
165 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

apprehend  personality  and  to  foresee  its  operation. 
If  the  mother  or  nurse  is  more  tender  than  just  she 
will  almost  certainly  be  "  worked "  by  systematic 
weeping.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that 
children  often  behave  worse  with  their  mother  than 
with  other  and  less  sympathetic  people.  Of  the 
new  persons  that  a  child  sees  it  is  evident  that 
some  make  a  strong  impression  and  awaken  a  desire 
to  interest  and  please  them,  while  others  are  indif- 
ferent or  repugnant.  Sometimes  the  reason  can  be 
perceived  or  guessed,  sometimes  not ;  but  the  fact  of 
selective  interest,  admiration,  prestige,  is  obvious  be- 
fore the  end  of  the  second  year.  By  that  time  a 
child  already  cares  much  for  the  reflection  of  himself 
\  upon  one  personality  and  little  for  that  upon  an* 
f  other.  Moreover,  he  soon  claims  intimate  and  trac- 
table persons  as  mine,  classes  them  among  his  other 
possessions,  and  maintains  his  ownership  against  all 
comers.  M.,  at  three  years  of  age,  vigorously  resent- 
ed E.'s  claim  upon  their  mother.  The  latter  was  "  my 
\  mamma,"  whenever  the  point  was  raised. 

Strong  joy  and  grief  depend  upon  the  treatment 
this  rudimentary  social  self  receives.  In  the  case 
of  M.  I  noticed  as  early  as  the  fourth  month  a 
"hurt"  way  of  crying  which  seemed  to  indicate  a 
sense  of  personal  slight.  It  was  quite  different  from 
the  cry  of  pain  or  that  of  anger,  but  seemed  about 
the  same  as  the  cry  of  fright.  The  slightest  tone  of 
reproof  would  produce  it.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
people  took  notice  and  laughed  and  encouraged,  she 

166 


• 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

was  hilarious.  At  about  fifteen  months  old  she  had 
become  "  a  perfect  little  actress,"  seeming  to  live 
largely  in  imaginations  of  her  effect  upon  other  peo- 
ple. She  constantly  and  obviously  laid  traps  for  at- 
tention, ancllQoked  abashed  or  wept  at  any  signs  of 
disapproval  or  indifference.  At  times  it  would  seem 
as  if  she  could  not  get  over  these  repulses,  but  would 
cry  long  in  a  grieved  way,  refusing  to  be  comforted. 
I  If  she  hit  upon  any  little  trick  that  made  people  laugh 
she  would  be  sure  to  repeat  it,  laughing  loudly  and 
affectedly  in  imitation.  She  had  quite  a  repertory  of 
these  small  performances,  which  she  would  display  to 
a  sympathetic  audience,  or  even  try  upon  strangers. 
I  have  seen  her  at  sixteen  months,  when  R.  refused 
to  give  her  the  scissors,  sit  down  and  make  believe 
cry,  putting  up  her  under  lip  and  snuffling,  mean- 
while looking  up  now  and  then  to  see  what  effect  she 
was  producing.* 

In  such  phenomena  we  have  plainly  enough,  it 
seems  to  me,  the  germ  of  personal  ambition  of  every 
sort.  Imagination  co-operating  with  instinctive  self- 
feeling  has  already  created  a  social  "  I,"  and  this  has 
become  a  principal  object  of  interest  and  endeavor. 

Progress  from  this  point  is  chiefly  in  the  way  of  a 
greater  definiteness,  fulness,  and  inwardness  in  the 
imagination  of  the  other's  state  of  mind.  A  little 
child  thinks  of  and  tries  to  elicit  certain  visible  or 

*  This  sort  of  thing  is  very  familiar  to  observers  of  children. 
See,  for  instance,  Miss  Shinn's  Notes  on  the  Development  of  a 
Child,  p.  153. 

167 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

audible  phenomena,  and  does  not  go  back  of  them ; 
but  what  a  grown-up  person  desires  to  produce  in 
others  is  an  internal,  invisible  condition  which  his 
own  richer  experience  enables  him  to  imagine,  and 
of  which  expression  is  only  the  sign.  Even  adults, 
however,  make  no  separation  between  what  other  peo- 
ple think  and  the  visible  expression  of  that  thought. 
They  imagine  the  whole  thing  at  once,  and  their  idea 
differs  from  that  of  a  child  chiefly  in  the  comparative 
richness  and  complexity  of  the  elements  that  accom- 
pany and  interpret  the  visible  or  audible  sign.  There 
is  also  a  progress  from  the  naive  to  the  subtle  in 
socially  self-assertive  action.  A  child  obviously  and 
simply,  at  first,  does  things  for  effect.  Later  there 
is  an  endeavor  to  suppress  the  appearance  of  doing 
so;  affection,  indifference,  contempt,  etc.,  are  simu- 
lated to  hide  the  real  wish  to  affect  the  self-image.  It 
is  perceived  that  an  obvious  seeking  after  good  opin- 
ion is  weak  and  disagreeable. 

I  doubt  whether  there  are  any  regular  stages  in  the 
development  of  social  self -feeling  and  expression  com- 
mon to  the  majority  of  children.  The  sentiments  of 
self  develop  by  imperceptible  gradations  out  of  the 
crude  appropriative  instinct  of  new-born  babes,  and 
their  manifestations  vary  indefinitely  in  different  cases. 
Many  children  show  "  self-consciousness  "  conspicu- 
ously from  the  first  half  year ;  others  have  little  ap- 
pearance of  it  at  any  age.  Still  others  pass  through 
periods  of  affectation  whose  length  and  time  of  occur- 
rence would  probably  be  found  to  be  exceedingly  va- 

168 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "  I " 

rious.  In  childhood,  as  at  all  times  of  life,  absorp- 
tion in  some  idea  other  than  that  of  the  social  self 
tends  to  drive  "  self-consciousness  "  out. 

Nearly  everyone,  however,  whose  turn  of  mind  is  at 
all  imaginative  goes  through  a  season  of  passionate 
self-feeling  during  adolescence,  when,  according  to 
current  belief,  the  social  impulses  are  stimulated  in 
connection  with  the  rapid  development  of  the  func- 
tions of  sex.  This  is  a  time  of  hero-worship,  of  high 
resolve,  of  impassioned  reverie,  of  vague  but  fierce 
ambition,  of  strenuous  imitation  that  seems  affect- 
ed, of  gene  in  the  presence  of  the  other  sex  or  of  supe- 
rior persons,  and  so  on. 

Many  autobiographies  describe  the  social  self-feel- 
ing of  youth  which,  in  the  case  of  strenuous,  suscepti- 
ble natures,  prevented  by  weak  health  or  uncongenial 
surroundings  from  gaming  the  sort  of  success  proper 
to  that  age,  often  attains  extreme  intensity.  This  is 
quite  generally  the  case  with  the  youth  of  men  of 
genius,  whose  exceptional  endowment  and  tendencies 
usually  isolate  them  more  or  less  from  the  ordinary 
life  about  them.  In  the  autobiography  of  John  Ad- 
dington  Symonds  we  have  an  account  of  the  feelings 
of  an  ambitious  boy  suffering  from  ill-health,  plain- 
ness of  feature — peculiarly  mortifying  to  his  strong 
aesthetic  instincts — and  mental  backwardness.  "I 
almost  resented  the  attentions  paid  me  as  my  father's 
son,  ...  I  regarded  them  as  acts  of  charitable 
condescension.  Thus  I  passed  into  an  attitude  of 

169 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

haughty  shyness  which  had  nothing  respectable  in  it 
except  a  sort  of  self-reliant,  world- defiant  pride,  a 
resolution  to  effectuate  myself,  and  to  win  what  I 
wanted  by  my  exertions.  ...  I  vowed  to  raise 
myself  somehow  or  other  to  eminence  of  some  sort. 
.  .  .  I  felt  no  desire  for  wealth,  no  mere  wish  to 
cut  a  figure  in  society.  But  I  thirsted  with  intoler- 
able thirst  for  eminence,  for  recognition  as  a  person- 
ality.* .  .  .  The  main  thing  which  sustained  me 
was  a  sense  of  self — imperious,  antagonistic,  unmalle- 
able.f  .  .  .  My  external  self  in  these  many  ways 
was  being  perpetually  snubbed,  and  crushed,  and 
mortified.  Yet  the  inner  self  hardened  after  a  dumb, 
blind  fashion.  I  kept  repeating,  '  Wait,  wait.  I  will, 
I  shall,  I  must.' "  J  At  Oxford  he  overhears  a  conver- 
sation in  which  his  abilities  are  depreciated  and  it  is 
predicted  that  he  will  not  get  his  "first."  "The 
sting  of  it  remained  in  me  ;  and  though  I  cared  little 
enough  for  first  classes,  I  then  and  there  resolved 
that  I  would  win  the  best  first  of  my  year.  This  kind 
of  grit  in  rue  has  to  be  notified.  Nothing  aroused 
it  so  much  as  a  seeming  slight,  exciting  my  rebellious 
manhood."§  Again  he  exclaims,  "I  look  round  me 
and  find  nothing  in  which  I  excel.  "II  ...  I 
fret  because  I  do  not  realize  ambition,  because  I 
have  no  active  work,  and  cannot  win  a  position  of 
importance  like  other  men."  1" 

This  sort  of  thing  is  familiar  in  literature,  and  very 

*  John  Addington  Symonds,  by  H  F.  Brown,  vol.  1,  p.  63. 

f  P.  70.        t  P.  74.       §  P.  120.        ||  P.  125.         f  P.  348. 

170 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

likely  in  our  own  experience.  It  seems  worth  while 
to  recall  it  and  to  point  out  that  this  primal  need  of 
self-effectuation,  to  adopt  Mr.  Symonds's  phrase,  is 
the  essence  of  ambition,  and  always  has  for  its  object 
the  production  of  some  effect  upon  the  minds  of 
other  people.  We  feel  in  the  quotations  above  the 
indomitable  surging  up  of  the  individualizing,  mili- 
tant force  of  which  self-feeling  seems  to  be  the  organ.  \ 

Sex-difference  in  the  development  of  the  social  self 
is  apparent  from  the  first.  Girls  have,  as  a  rule,  a 
more  impressible  social  sensibility;  they  care  more 
obviously  for  the  social  image,  study  it,  reflect  upon 
it  more,  and  so  have  even  during  the  first  year  an 
appearance  of  subtlety,  finesse,  often  of  affectation,  in 
which  boys  are  comparatively  lacking.  Boys  are 
more  taken  up  with  muscular  activity  for  its  own  sake 
and  with  construction,  their  imaginations  are  occupied 
somewhat  less  with  persons  and  more  with  things. 
In  a  girl  das  ewig  Weibliche,  not  easy  to  describe 
but  quite  unmistakable,  appears  as  soon  as  she  be- 
gins to  take  notice  of  people,  and  one  phase  of  it  is 
certainly  an  ego  less  simple  and  stable,  a  stronger 
impulse  to  go  over  to  the  other  person's  point  of 
view  and  to  stake  joy  and  grief  on  the  image  in  his 
mind.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  women  are  as  a 
rule  more  dependent  upon  immediate  personal  sup- 
port and  corroboration  than  are  men.  The  thought 
of  the  woman  needs  to  fix  itself  upon  some  person 
in  whose  mind  she  can  find  a  stable  and  compelling 

171 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

image  of  herself  by  which  to  live.  If  such  an  image 
is  found,  either  in  a  visible  or  an  ideal  person,  the 
power  of  devotion  to  it  becomes  a  source  of  strength. 
But  it  is  a  sort  of  strength  dependent  upon  this  per- 
sonal complement,  without  which  the  womanly  char- 
acter is  somewhat  apt  to  become  a  derelict  and  drift- 
ing vessel.  Men  being  built  more  for  aggression, 
have,  relatively,  a  greater  power  of  standing  alone. 
But  no  one  can  really  stand  alone,  and  the  appear- 
ance of  it  is  due  simply  to  a  greater  momentum  and 
continuity  of  character  which  stores  up  the  past  and 
resists  immediate  influences.  Directly  or  indirectly 
the  imagination  of  how  we  appear  to  others  is  a  con- 
trolling force  in  all  normal  minds. 

The  vague  but  potent  phases  of  the  self  associated 
with  the  instinct  of  sex  may  be  regarded,  like  other 
phases,  as  expressive  of  a  need  to  exert  power  and  as 
having  reference  to  personal  function.  The  youth,  I 
take  it,  is  bashful  precisely  because  he  is  conscious  of 
the  vague  stirring  of  an  aggressive  instinct  which  he 
does  not  know  how  either  to  effectuate  or  to  ignore. 
And  it  is  perhaps  much  the  same  with  the  other  sex : 
the  bashful  are  always  aggressive  at  heart ;  they  are 
conscious  of  an  interest  in  the  other  person,  of  a  need 
to  be  something  to  him.  And  the  more  developed 
sexual  passion,  in  both  sexes,  is  very  largely  an  emo- 
tion of  power,  domination,  or  appropriation.  There 
is  no  state  of  feeling  that  says  "  mine,  mine,"  more 
fiercely.  The  need  to  be  appropriated  or  dominated 
which,  in  women  at  least,  is  equally  powerful,  is 

172 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "  I " 

of  the  same  nature  at  bottom,  having  for  its  object 
the  attracting  to  itself  of  a  masterful  passion.  "  The 
desire  of  the  man  is  for  the  woman,  but  the  desire  of 
the  woman  is  for  the  desire  of  the  man."* 

Although  boys  have  generally  a  less  impressionable 
social  self  than  girls,  there  is  great  difference  among 
them  in  this  regard.  Some  of  them  have  a  marked 
tendency  to  finesse  and  posing,  while  others  have 
almost  none.  The  latter  have  a  less  vivid  personal 
imagination ;  they  are  unaffected  chiefly,  perhaps,  be- 
cause they  have  no  vivid  idea  of  how  they  seem  to 
others,  and  so  are  not  moved  to  seem  rather  than  to 
be  ;  they  are  unresentful  of  slights  because  they  do 
not  feel  them,  not  ashamed  or  jealous  or  vain  or 
proud  or  remorseful,  because  all  these  imply  imagina- 
tion of  another's  mind.  I  have  known  children  who 
showed  no  tendency  whatever  to  lie ;  in  fact,  could 
not  understand  the  nature  or  object  of  lying  or  of  any 
sort  of  concealment,  as  in  such  games  as  hide-and- 
VfJr]7T-  This  excessively  simple  way  of  looking  at 
things  may  come  from  unusual  absorption  in  the  ob- 
servation and  analysis  of  the  impersonal,  as  appeared  / 
to  be  the  case  with  R.,  whose  interest  in  other  facts  and 
their  relations  so  much  preponderated  over  his  inter- 
est in  personal  attitudes  that  there  was  no  temptation 
to  sacrifice  the  former  to  the  latter.  A  child  of  this 
sort  gives  the  impression  of  being  non-moral;  he 
neither  sins  nor  repents,  and  has  not  the  knowledge 
*  Attributed  to  Mme.  de  Stael. 
173 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  good  and  evil.  We  eat  of  the  tree  of  this  knowl- 
edge when  we  begin  to  imagine  the  minds  of  others, 
and  so  become  aware  of  that  conflict  of  personal  im- 
pulses which  conscience  aims  to  allay. 

Simplicity  is  a  pleasant  thing  in  children,  or  at  any 
age,  but  it  is  not  necessarily  admirable,  nor  is  affecta- 
tion altogether  a  thing  of  evil.  To  be  normal,  to  be 
at  home  in  the  world,  with  a  prospect  of  power,  use- 
fulness, or  success,  the  person  must  have  that  imagi- 
native insight  into  other  minds  that  underlies  tact  and 
savoir-faire,  morality,  and  beneficence.  This  insight 
involves  sophistication,  some  understanding  and  shar- 
ing of  the  clandestine  impulses  of  human  nature.  A 
simplicity  that  is  merely  the  lack  of  this  insight 
indicates  a  sort  of  defect.  There  is,  however,  an- 
other kind  of  simplicity,  belonging  to  a  character  that 
is  subtle  and  sensitive,  but  has  sufficient  force  and 
mental  clearness  to  keep  in  strict  order  the  many 
impulses  to  which  it  is  open,  and  so  preserve  its 
directness  and  unity.  One  may  be  simple  like 
Simple  Simon,  or  in  the  sense  that  Emerson  meant 
when  he  said,  "  To  be  simple  is  to  be  great."  Affec- 
tation, vanity  and  the  like,  indicate  the  lack  of 
proper  assimilation  of  the  influences  arising  from 
our  sense  of  what  others  think  of  us.  Instead  of 
these  influences  working  upon  the  individual  grad- 
ually and  without  disturbing  his  equilibrium,  they 
overbear  him  so  that  he  appears  to  be  not  him- 
self, posing,  out  of  function,  and  hence  silly,  weak, 
contemptible.  The  affected  smile,  the  "  foolish  face 

174 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

of  praise  "  is  a  type  of  all  affectation,  an  external, 
put-on  thing,  a  weak  and  fatuous  petition  for  ap- 
proval. Whenever  one  is  growing  rapidly,  learning 
eagerly,  preoccupied  with  strange  ideals,  he  is  in 
danger  of  this  loss  of  equilibrium  ;  and  so  we  notice 
it  in  sensitive  children,  especially  girls,  in  young 
people  between  fourteen  and  twenty,  and  at  all  ages 
in  persons  of  unstable  individuality. 

This  disturbance  of  our  equilibrium  by  the  out- 
going of  the  imagination  toward  another  person's 
point  of  view  means  that  we  are  undergoing  his  in- 
fluence. In  the  presence  of  one  whom  we  feel  to  be 
of  importance  there  is  a  tendency  to  enter  into  and 
adopt,  by  sympathy,  his  judgment  of  ourself,  to  put 
a  new  value  on  ideas  and  purposes,  to  recast  life  in 
his  image.  With  a  very  sensitive  person  this  tenden- 
cy is  often  evident  to  others  in  ordinary  conversation 
and  in  trivial  matters.  By  force  of  an  impulse  spring- 
ing directly  from  the  delicacy  of  his  perceptions 
he  is  continually  imagining  how  he  appears  to  his  in- 
terlocutor, and  accepting  the  image,  for  the  moment, 
as  himself.  If  the  other  appears  to  think  him  well- 
informed  on  some  recondite  matter,  he  is  likely  to 
assume  a  learned  expression ;  if  thought  judicious  he 
looks  as  if  he  were,  if  accused  of  dishonesty  he  ap- 
pears guilty,  and  so  on.  In  short,  a  sensitive  man, 
in  the  presence  of  an  impressive  personality,  tends  to 
become,  for  the  time,  his  interpretation  of  what  the 
other  thinks  he  is.  It  is  only  the  heavy-minded  who 
will  not  feel  this  to  be  true,  in  some  degree,  of  them- 

175 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

selves.  Of  course  it  is  usually  a  temporary  and 
somewhat  superficial  phenomenon ;  but  it  is  typical 
of  all  ascendency,  and  helps  us  to  understand  how 
persons  have  power  over  us  through  some  hold  upon 
our  imaginations,  and  how  our  personality  grows  and 
takes  form  by  divining  the  appearance  of  our  present 
self  to  other  minds. 

So  long  as  a  character  is  open  and  capable  of 
growth  it  retains  a  corresponding  impressibility, 
which  is  not  weakness  unless  it  swamps  the  assim- 
ilating and  organizing  faculty.  I  know  men  whose 
careers  are  a  proof  of  stable  and  aggressive  character 
who  have  an  almost  feminine  sensitiveness  regarding 
their  seeming  to  others.  Indeed,  if  one  sees  a  man 
whose  attitude  toward  others  is  always  assertive,  never 
receptive,  he  may  be  confident  that  man  will  never 
go  far,  because  he  will  never  learn  much.  In  char- 
acter, as  in  every  phase  of  life,  health  requires  a  just 
union  of  stability  with  plasticity. 

There  is  a  vague  excitement  of  the  social  self  more 
general  than  any  particular  emotion  or  sentiment. 
Thus  the  mere  presence  of  people,  a  "  sense  of  other 
persons,"  as  Professor  Baldwin  says,  and  an  aware- 
ness of  their  observation,  often  causes  a  vague  dis- 
comfort, doubt,  and  tension.  One  feels  that  there  is 
a  social  image  of  himself  lurking  about,  and  not 
knowing  what  it  is  he  is  obscurely  alarmed.  Many 
people,  perhaps  most,  feel  more  or  less  agitation  and 
embarrassment  under  the  observation  of  strangers, 
and  for  some  even  sitting  in  the  same  room  with  un- 

176 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "  I " 

familiar  or  uncongenial  people  is  harassing  and  ex- 
hausting. It  is  well  known,  for  instance,  that  a  visit 
from  a  stranger  would  often  cost  Darwin  his  night's 
sleep,  and  many  similar  examples  could  be  collected 
from  the  records  of  men  of  letters.  At  this  point, 
however,  it  is  evident  that  we  approach  the  borders 
of  mental  pathology. 

Possibly  some  will  think  that  I  exaggerate  the 
importance  of  social  self-feeling  by  taking  persons 
and  periods  of  life  that  are  abnormally  sensitive. 
But  I  believe  that  with  all  normal  and  human  people 
it  remains,  in  one  form  or  another,  the_  mainspring 
of  endeavor  and  a  chief  interest  of  the  imagination 
throughout  lifer  As  is  the  case  with  other  feelings, 
we  do  not  think  much  of  it  so  long  as  it  is  mod- 
erately and  regularly  gratified.  Many  people  of  bal- 
anced mind  and  congenial  activity  scarcely  know 
that  they  care  what  others  think  of  them,  and  will 
deny,  perhaps  with  indignation,  that  such  care  is  an 
important  factor  in  what  they  are  and  do.  But  this 
is  illusion.  If  failure  or  disgrace  arrives,  if  one  sud- 
denly finds  that  the  faces  of  men  show  coldness  or 
contempt  instead  of  the  kindliness  and  deference 
that  he  is  used  to,  he  will  perceive  from  the  shock, 
the  fear,  the  sense  of  being  outcast  and  helpless, 
that  he  was  living  in  the  minds  of  others  without 
knowing  it,  just  as  we  daily  walk  the  solid  ground 
without  thinking  how  it  bears  us  up.  This  fact  is 
so  familiar  in  literature,  especially  in  modern  nov- 

177 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

els,  that  it  ought  to  be  obvious  enough.  The  works 
of  George  Eliot  are  particularly  strong  in  the  expo- 
sition of  it.  In  most  of  her  novels  there  is  some 
character  like  Mr.  Bulstrode  in  "  Middlemarch  "  or 
Mr.  Jermyn  in  "  Felix  Holt,"  whose  respectable  and 
long-established  social  image  of  himself  is  shattered 
by  the  coming  to  light  of  hidden  truth. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  the  attempt  to  describe  the 
social  self  and  to  analyze  the  mental  processes  that 
enter  into  it  almost  unavoidably  makes  it  appear 
more  reflective  and  "  self-conscious  "  than  it  usually 
is.  Thus  while  some  readers  will  be  able  to  discover 
in  themselves  a  quite  definite  and  deliberate  con- 
templation of  the  reflected  self,  others  will  perhaps 
find  nothing  but  a  sympathetic  impulse,  so  simple 
that  it  can  hardly  be  made  the  object  of  distinct 
thought.  Many  people  whose  behavior  shows  that 
their  idea  of  themselves  is  largely  caught  from  the 
persons  they  are  with,  are  yet  quite  innocent  of  any 
intentional  posing ;  it  is  a  matter  of  subconscious 
impulse  or  mere  suggestion.  The  self  of  very  sensi- 
tive but  non-reflective  minds  is  of  this  character. 


178 


CHAPTER  YI 
THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

EGOTISM  AND  SELFISHNESS — THE  USE  OF  "  I "  IN  LITERATURE 
AND  CONVERSATION — INTENSE  SELF-FEELING  NECESSARY  TO 
PRODUCTIVITY — OTHER  PHASES  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SELF — PRIDE 
versus  VANITY — SELF-RESPECT,  HONOR,  SELF-REVF.RENCE — 
HUMILITY — MALADIES  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SELF — WITHDRAWAL — 
SELF-TRANSFORMATION — PHASES  OF  THE  SELF  CAUSED  BY  IN- 
CONGRUITY BETWEEN  THE  PERSON  AND  HIS  SURROUNDINGS. 

IP  self  and  the  self-seeking  that  springs  from  it  are 
healthy  and  respectable  traits  of  human  nature,  then 
what  are  those  things  which  we  call  egotism  and  self- 
ishness,* and  which  are  so  commonly  regarded  as 
objectionable?  The  answer  to  this  appears  to  be 
that  it  is  not  self-assertion  as  such  that  we  stigmatize  > 
by  these  names,  but -the  assertion  of  a  kind  or  phase 
of  self  that  is  obnoxious  to  us.  So  long  as  we  agree 
with  a  man's  thoughts  and  aims  we  do  not  think  of 
him  as  selfish  or  egotistical,  however  urgently  he  may 
assert  them  ;  but  so  soon  as  we  cease  to  agree,  while 
he  continues  persistent  and  perhaps  intrusive,  we  are 
likely  to  say  hard  things  about  him.  It  is  at  bottom 
a  matter  of  moral  judgment,  not  to  be  comprised  in 

*  I  do  not  attempt  to  distinguish  between  these  words,  though 
there  is  a  difference,  ill  defined  however,  in  their  meanings.  As 
ordinarily  used  both  designate  a  phase  of  self-assertion  regarded  as 
censurable,  and  this  is  all  I  mean  by  either. 

179 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

any  simple  definition,  but  to  be  determined  by  con- 
science after  the  whole  situation  is  taken  into  account. 
In  this  regard  it  is  essentially  one  with  the  more  gen- 
eral question  of  misconduct  or  personal  badness. 
There  is  no  distinct  line  between  the  behavior  which 
we  mildly  censure  as  selfish  and  that  which  we  call 
wicked  or  criminal ;  it  is  only  a  matter  of  degree. 

It  is  quite  apparent  that  mere  self-assertion  is  not 
looked  upon  as  selfishness.  There  is  nothing  more 
respected — and  even  liked — than  a  persistent  and  suc- 
cessful pursuit  of  one's  peculiar  aims,  so  long  as  this 
is  done  within  the  accepted  limits  of  fairness  and 
consideration  for  others.  Thus  one  who  has  acquired 
ten  millions  must  have  expressed  his  appropriative 
instinct  with  much  energy  and  constancy,  but  reason- 
able people  do  not  conclude  that  he  is  selfish  unless 
it  appears  that  he  has  ignored  social  sentiments  by 
which  he  should  have  been  guided.  If  he  has  been 
dishonest,  mean,  hard,  or  the  like,  they  will  condemn 
him. 

The  men  we  admire  most,  including  those  we  look 
upon  as  peculiarly  good,  are  invariably  men  of  nota- 
ble self-assertion.  Thus  Martin  Luther,  to  take  a 
conspicuous  instance,  was  a  man  of  the  most  intense 
self-feeling,  resentful  of  opposition,  dogmatic,  with 
"  an  absolute  confidence  in  the  infallibility,  practically 
speaking,  of  his  own  judgment."  This  is  a  trait  be- 
longing to  nearly  all  great  leaders,  and  a  main  cause 
of  their  success.  That  which  distinguishes  Luther 
from  the  vulgarly  ambitious  and  aggressive  people 

180 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

we  know  is  not  the  quality  of  his  self-feeling,  but 
the  fact  that  it  was  identified  in  his  imagination 
and  endeavors  with  sentiments  and  purposes  that 
we  look  upon  as  noble,  progressive,  or  right.  No 
one  could  be  more  ambitious  than  he  was,  or  more 
determined  to  secure  the  social  aggrandizement  of 
his  self;  but  in  his  case  the  self  for  which  he 
was  ambitious  and  resentful  consisted  largely  of 
certain  convictions  regarding  justification  by  faith, 
the  sacrilege  of  the  sale  of  indulgences,  and,  more 
generally,  of  an  enfranchising  spirit  and  mode  of 
thought  fit  to  awaken  and  lead  the  aspiration  of  the 
time. 

It  is  evident  enough  that  in  this  respect  Luther  is 
typical  of  aggressive  reformers  in  our  own  and  every 
other  time.  Does  not  every  efficient  clergyman,  phi- 
lanthropist, or  teacher  become  such  by  identifying 
some  worthy  object  with  a  vigorous  self-feeling  ?  Is 
it  ever  really  possible  to  separate  the  feeling  for  the 
cause  from  the  feeling  that  it  is  my  cause  ?  I  doubt 
whether  it  is.  Some  of  the  greatest  and  purest  found- 
ers and  propagators  of  religion  have  been  among  the 
greatest  egotists  in  the  sense  that  they  openly  iden- 
tified the  idea  of  good  with  the  idea  of  self,  and  spoke 
of  the  two  interchangeably.  And  I  cannot  think  of 
any  strong  man  I  have  known,  however  good,  who 
does  not  seem  to  me  to  have  had  intense  self -feeling 
about  his  cherished  affair ;  though  if  his  affair  was  a 
large  and  helpful  one  no  one  would  call  him  selfish. 

Since  the  judgment  that  a  man  is  or  is  not  selfish 
181 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  a  question  of  sympathies,  it  naturally  follows  that 
people  easily  disagree  regarding  it,  their  views  de- 
pending much  upon  their  temperaments  and  habits  of 
thought.  There  are  probably  few  energetic  persons 
who  do  not  make  an  impression  of  egotism  upon  some 
of  their  acquaintances  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  how 
many  there  are  whose  selfishness  seems  obvious  to 
most  people,  but  is  not  apparent  to  their  wives, 
sisters  and  mothers.  In  so  far  as  our  self  is  identified 
with  that  of  another  it  is,  of  course,  unlikely  that  the 
aims  of  the  latter  should  be  obnoxious  to  us. 

If  we  should  question  many  persons  as  to  why 
they  thought  this  or  that  man  selfish,  a  common 
answer  would  probably  be,  "  He  does  not  consider 
other  people."  What  this  means  is  that  he  is  inap- 
preciative  of  the  social  situation  as  we  see  it ;  that 
the  situation  does  not  awaken  in  him  the  same  per- 
sonal sentiments  that  it  does  in  us,  and  so  his  action 
wounds  those  sentiments.  Thus  the  commonest  and 
most  obvious  form  of  selfishness  is  perhaps  the  fail- 
ure to  subordinate  sensual  impulses  to  social  feel- 
ing, and  this,  of  course,  results  from  the  apathy  of 
the  imaginative  impulses  that  ought  to  effect  this 
subordination.  It  would  usually  be  impossible  for  a 
man  to  help  himself  to  the  best  pieces  on  the  platter 
if  he  conceived  the  disgust  and  resentment  which  he 
excites.  And  though  this  is  a  very  gross  and  palpa- 
ble sort  of  selfishness,  it  is  analogous  in  nature  to  the 
finer  kinds.  A  fine-grained,  subtle  Egoist,  such  as  is 
portrayed  in  George  Meredith's  novel  of  that  name, 

182 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

or  such  as  Isabel's  husband  in  Henry  James's  "  Por- 
trait of  a  Lacty,"  has  delicate  perceptions  in  certain 
directions,  but  along  with  these  there  is  some  essen- 
tial narrowness  or  vulgarity  of  imagination  which 
prevents  him  from  grasping  what  we  feel  to  be  the 
true  social  situation,  and  having  the  sentiments  that 
should  respond  to  it.  The  aesthetic  refinement  of 
Osmond  which  so  impresses  Isabel  before  her  mar- 
riage turns  out  to  be  compatible  with  a  general  small- 
ness  of  mind.  He  is  "  not  a  good  fellow,"  as  Ralph 
remarks,  and  incapable  of  comprehending  her  or  her 
friends. 

A  lack  of  tact  in  face-to-face  intercourse  very  com- 
monly gives  an  impression  of  egotism,  even  when  it 
is  a  superficial  trait  not  really  expressive  of  an  un- 
sympathetic character.  Thus  there  are  persons  who 
in  the  simplest  conversation  do  not  seem  to  forget 
themselves,  and  enter  frankly  and  disinterestedly  into 
the  subject,  but  are  felt  to  be  always  preoccupied 
with  the  thought  of  the  impression  they  are  making, 
imagining  praise  or  depreciation,  and  usually  posing 
a  little  to  avoid  the  one  or  gain  the  other.  Such 
people  are  uneasy,  and  make  others  so ;  no  relaxation 
is  possible  in  their  company,  because  they  never 
come  altogether  out  into  open  and  common  ground, 
but  are  always  keeping  back  something.  It  is  not  so 
much  that  they  have  self-feeling  as  that  it  is  clandes- 
tine and  furtive,  giving  one  a  sense  of  insecurity. 
Sometimes  they  are  aware  of  this  lack  of  frankness, 
and  try  to  offset  it  by  reckless  confessions,  but  this 

183 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDEK 

only  shows  their  self-consciousness  in  another  and 
hardly  more  agreeable  aspect.  Perhaps  the  only 
cure  for  this  sort  of  egotism  is  to  cherish  very  high 
and  difficult  ambitions,  and  so  drain  off  the  super- 
abundance of  self-feeling  from  these  petty  channels. 
People  who  are  doing  really  important  things  usually 
appear  simple  and  unaffected  in  conversation,  largely 
because  their  selves  are  healthfully  employed  else- 
where. 

One  who  has  tact  always  sees  far  enough  into  the 
state  of  mind  of  the  person  with  whom  he  is  con- 
versing to  adapt  himself  to  it  and  to  seem,  at  least, 
sympathetic  ;  he  is  sure  to  feel  the  situation.  But  if 
you  tread  upon  the  other  person's  toes,  talk  about 
yourself  when  he  is  not  interested  in  that  subject, 
and,  in  general,  show  yourself  out  of  touch  with  his 
mind,  he  very  naturally  finds  you  disagreeable.  And 
behavior  analogous  to  this  in  the  more  enduring 
relations  of  life  gives  rise  to  a  similar  judgment. 

So  far  as  there  is  any  agreement  in  judgments  re- 
garding selfishness  it  arises  from  common  standards 
of  right,  fairness,  and  courtesy  which  all  thoughtful 
minds  work  out  from  their  experience,  and  which 
represent  what  the  general  good  requires.  The  self- 
ish man  is  one  in  whose  self,  or  in  whose  style  of 
asserting  it,  is  something  that  falls  below  these 
standards.  He  is  a  transgressor  of  fair-play  and  the 
rules  of  the  game,  an  outlaw  with  whom  no  one  ought 
to  sympathize,  but  against  whom  all  should  unite  for 
the  general  good. 

184 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

It  is  the  unhealthy  or  egotistical  self  that  is  usu- 
ally meant  by  the  word  self  when  used  in  moral  dis- 
cussions ;  it  is  this  that  people  need  to  get  away 
from,  both  for  their  own  good  and  that  of  the  com- 
munity. When  we  speak  of  getting  out  of  one's 
"  self  "  we  commonly  mean  any  line  of  thought  with 
which  one  tends  to  be  unduly  preoccupied;  so  that  to 
escape  from  it  is  indeed  a  kind  of  salvation. 

There  is  perhaps  no  sort  of  self  more  subject  to 
dangerous  egotism  than  that  which  deludes  itself 
with  the  notion  that  it  is  not  a  self  at  all,  but  some- 
thing else.  It  is  well  to  beware  of  persons  who  be- 
lieve that  the  cause,  the  mission,  the  philanthropy, 
the  hero,  or  whatever  it  may  be  that  they  strive  for, 
is  outside  of  themselves,  so  that  they  feel  a  certain 
irresponsibility,  and  are  likely  to  do  things  which 
they  would  recognize  as  wrong  if  done  in  behalf  of 
an  acknowledged  self.  Just  as  the  Spanish  armies 
in  the  Netherlands  held  that  their  indulgence  in 
murder,  torture,  and  brutal  lust  was  sanctified  by  the 
supposed  holy  character  of  their  mission,  so  in  our 
own  time  the  name  of  religion,  science,  patriotism,  or 
charity  sometimes  enables  people  to  indulge  com- 
fortably in  browbeating,  intrusion,  slander,  dishon- 
esty, and  the  like.  Every  cherislied  idea  is  a  self :  / 
and  though  it  appear  to  the  individual,  or  to  a 
class,  or  to  a  whole  nation,  worthy  to  swallow  up 
all  other  selves,  it  is  subject  to  the  same  need  of 
discipline  under  rules  of  justice  and  decency  as  any 
other.  It  is  healthy  for  everyone  to  understand 

185 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  lie  is,  and  will  remain,  a  self -seeker,  and  that  if 
he  gets  out  of  one  self  he  is  sure  to  form  another 
which  may  stand  in  equal  need  of  control. 

Selfishness  as  a  mental  trait  is  always  some  sort 
of  narrowness,  littleness  or  defect ;  an  inadequacy  of 
imagination.  The  perfectly  balanced  and  vigorous 
mind  can  hardly  be  selfish,  because  it  cannot  be  ob- 
livious to  any  important  social  situation,  either  in 
immediate  intercourse  or  in  more  permanent  rela- 
tions ;  it  must  always  tend  to  be  sympathetic,  fair, 
and  just,  because  it  possesses  that  breadth  and  unity 
of  view  of  which  these  qualities  are  the  natural  ex- 
pression. To  lack  them  is  to  be  not  altogether  so- 
cial and  human,  and  may  be  regarded  as  the  begin- 
ning of  degeneracy.  Egotism  is  then  not  something 
additional  to  ordinary  human  nature,  as  the  common 
way  of  speaking  suggests,  but  rather  a  lack.  The 
egotist  is  not  more  than  a  man,  but  less  than  a  man  ; 
and  as  regards  personal  power  he  is  as  a  rule  the 
weaker  for  his  egotism.  The  very  fact  that  he  has  a 
bad  name  shows  that  the  world  is  against  him,  and 
that  he  is  contending  against  odds.  The  success  of 
selfishness  attracts  attention  and  exaggeration  be- 
cause it  is  hateful  to  us ;  but  the  really  strong  gen- 
erally work  within  the  prevalent  standards  of  justice 
and  courtesy,  and  so  escape  condemnation. 

There  is  infinite  variety  in  egotism ;  but  an  impor- 
tant division  may  be  based  on  the  greater  or  less 
stability  of  the  egotists'  characters.  According  to 
this  we  may  divide  them  into  those  of  the  unstable 

186 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

type  and  those  of  the  rigid  type.  Extreme  instabil- 
ity is  always  selfish ;  the  very  weak  cannot  be  other- 
wise, because  they  lack  both  the  deep  sympathy  that 
enables  people  to  penetrate  the  lives  of  others,  and 
the  consistency  and  self-control  necessary  to  make 
sympathy  effective  if  they  had  it.  Their  superficial 
and  fleeting  impulses  are  as  likely  to  work  harm  as 
good  and  cannot  be  trusted  to  bring  forth  any  sound 
fruit.  If  they  are  amiable  at  times  they  are  sure  to 
be  harsh,  cold,  or  violent  at  other  times ;  there  is  no 
justice,  no  solid  good  or  worth  in  them.  The  sort  of 
people  I  have  in  mind  are,  for  instance,  such  as  in 
times  of  affliction  go  about  weeping  and  wringing 
their  hands  to  the  neglect  of  their  duty  to  aid  and 
comfort  the  survivors,  possibly  taking  credit  for  the 
tenderness  of  their  hearts. 

The  other  sort  of  egotism,  not  sharply  distin- 
guished from  this  in  all  cases,  belongs  to  people  who 
have  stability  of  mind  and  conduct,  but  still  without 
breadth  and  richness  of  sympathy,  so  that  their  aims 
and  sentiments  are  inadequate  to  the  life  around 
them — narrow,  hard,  mean,  self-satisfied,  or  sensual. 
This  I  would  call  the  rigid  type  of  egotism  because 
the  essence  of  it  is  an  arrest  of  sympathetic  develop- 
ment and  an  ossification  as  it  were  of  what  should 
be  a  plastic  and  growing  part  of  thought.  Some- 
thing of  this  sort  is  perhaps  what  is  most  commonly 
meant  by  the  word,  and  everyone  can  think  of  harsh, 
gross,  grasping,  cunning,  or  self-complacent  traits  to 
which  he  would  apply  it.  The  self,  to  be  healthy  or 

187 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

to  be  tolerable  to  other  selves,  must  be  ever  moving 
on,  breaking  loose  from  lower  habits,  walking  hand- 
in-hand  with  sympathy  and  aspiration.  If  it  stops 
too  long  anywhere  it  becomes  stagnant  and  diseased, 
odious  to  other  minds  and  harmful  to  the  mind  it  in- 
habits. The  men  that  satisfy  the  imagination  are 
chastened  men ;  large,  human,  inclusive,  feeling  the 
breadth  of  the  world.  It  is  impossible  to  think  of 
Shakespeare  as  arrogant,  vain,  or  sensual ;  and  if 
some,  like  Dante,  had  an  exigent  ego,  they  succeeded 
in  transforming  it  into  higher  and  higher  forms. 

Selfishness  of  the  stable  or  rigid  sort  is  as  a  rule 
more  bitterly  resented  than  the  more  fickle  variety, 
chiefly,  no  doubt,  because,  having  more  continuity 
and  purpose,  it  is  more  formidable. 

One  who  accepts  the  idea  of  self,  and  of  personality 
in  general,  already  set  forth,  will  agree  that  what  is 
ordinarily  called  egotism  cannot  properly  be  regarded 
as  the  opposite  of  "altruism,"  or  of  any  word  imply- 
ing the  self-and-other  classification  of  impulses.  No 
clear  or  useful  idea  of  selfishness  can  be  reached  on 
the  basis  of  this  classification,  which,  as  previously 
stated,  seems  to  me  fictitious.  It  misrepresents  the 
mental  situation,  and  so  tends  to  confuse  thought. 
The  mind  has  not,  in  fact,  two  sets  of  motives  to 
choose  from,  the  self-motives  and  the  other-motives, 
the  latter  of  which  stand  for  the  higher  course,  but 
has  the  far  more  difficult  task  of  achieving  a  higher 
life  by  gradually  discriminating  and  organizing  a 
great  variety  of  motives  not  easily  divisible  into 

188 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

moral  groups.  The  proper  antithesis  of  selfishness  is  |  ) 
right,  justice,  breadth,  magnanimity,  or  something  of 
that  sort ;  something  opposite  to  the  narrowness  of 
feeling  and  action  in  which  selfishness  essentially 
consists.  It  is  a  matter  of  more  or  less  symmetry 
and  stature,  like  the  contrast  between  a  gnarled  and 
stunted  tree  and  one  of  ample  growth. 

The  ideas  denoted  by  such  phrases  as  my  friend, 
my  country,  my  duty,  and  so  on,  are  just  the  ones 
that  stand  for  broad  or  "unselfish"  impulses,  and 
yet  they  are  self-ideas  as  shown  by  the  first-personal 
pronoun.  In  the  expression  "my  duty"  we  have 
in  six  letters  a  refutation  of  that  way  of  thinking 
which  makes  right  the  opposite  of  self.  That  it 
stands  for  the  right  all  will  admit ;  and  yet  no  one 
can  pronounce  it  meaningly  without  perceiving  that 
it  is  charged  with  intense  self-feeling. 

It  is  always  vain  to  try  to  separate  the  outer  as- 
pect of  a  motive,  the  other  people,  the  cause  or  the 
like,  which  we  think  of  as  external,  from  the  private 
or  self  aspect,  which  we  think  of  as  internal.  The 
apparent  separation  is  purely  illusive.  It  is  surely 
a  very  simple  truth  that  what  makes  us  act  in  an 
unselfish  or  devoted  manner  is  always  some  sort  of 
sentiment  in  our  own  minds,  and  if  we  cherish  this 
sentiment  intimately  it  is  a  part  of  ourselves.  We  de- 
velop the  inner  life  by  outwardly  directed  thought 
and  action,  relating  mostly  to  other  persons,  to 
causes,  and  the  like.  Is  there  no  difference,  then, 
it  may  be  asked,  between  doing  a  kind  act  to  please 

189 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

someone  else  and  doing  it  to  please  one's  self  ?  I 
should  say  regarding  this  that  while  it  is  obvious,  if 
one  thinks  of  it,  that  pleasing  another  can  exist  for 
me  only  as  a  pleasant  feeling  in  my  oAvn  mind,  which 
is  the  motive  of  my  action,  there  is  a  difference  in 
the  meaning  of  these  expressions  as  commonly  used. 
Pleasing  one's  self  ordinarily  means  that  wo  act  from 
some  comparatively  narrow  sentiment  not  involving 
penetrating  sympathy.  Thus,  if  one  gives  Christmas 
presents  to  make  a  good  impression  or  from  a  sense  of 
propriety,  he  might  be  said  to  do  it  to  please  himself, 
while  if  he  really  imagined  the  pleasure  the  gift  would 
bring  to  the  recipient  he  would  do  it  to  please  the 
latter.  But  it  is  clear  enough  that  his  own  pleasure 
might  be  quite  as  great  in  the  second  case.  Again, 
sometimes  we  do  things  "to  please  others"  which 
we  declare  are  painful  to  ourselves.  But  this,  of 
course,  means  merely  that  there  are  conflicting  im- 
pulses in  our  own  minds,  some  of  which  are  sacri- 
ficed to  others.  The  satisfaction,  or  whatever  you 
choose  to  call  it,  that  one  gets  when  he  prefers  his 
duty  to  some  other  course  is  just  as  much  his  own  as 
any  pleasure  he  renounces.  No  self-sacrifice  is  ad- 
mirable that  is  not  Uie_choice  of  a  higher  or  larger 
aspect  of  the  self  over  a  lower  or  partial  aspect.  If 
a  man's  act  is  really  self-sacrifice,  that  is,  not  properly 
his  own,  he  would  better  not  do  it. 

Some  opponent  of  Darwin  attempted  to  convict  him 
of  egotism  by  counting  the  number  of  times  that  the 

190 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

pronoun  "  I "  appears  upon  the  first  few  pages  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species."  He  was  able  to  find  a  great 
many,  and  to  cause  Darwin,  who  was  as  modest  a  man 
as  ever  lived,  to  feel  abashed  at  the  showing ;  but  it 
is  doubtful  if  he  convinced  any  reader  of  the  book  of 
the  truth  of  the  assertion.  In  fact,  although  the  dic- 
tionary defines  egotism  as  "  the  habit  or  practice  of 
thinking  and  talking  much  of  one's  self,"  the  use  of 
the  first-personal  pronoun  is  hardly  the  essence  of 
the  matter.  This  use  is  always  in  some  degree  a  self- 
assertion,  but  it  has  a  disagreeable  or  egotistical  effect 
only  in  so  far  as  the  self  asserted  is  repellent  to  us. 
Even  Montaigne,  who  says  "  I "  on  every  other  line, 
and  whose  avowed  purpose  is  to  display  himself  at 
large  and  in  all  possible  detail,  does  not,  it  seems  to 
me,  really  make  an  impression  of  egotism  upon  the 
congenial  reader,  because  he  contrives  to  make  his 
self  so  interesting  in  every  aspect  that  the  more  we 
are  reminded  of  it  the  better  we  are  pleased ;  and  there 
is  good  sense  in  his  doctrine  that  "not  to  speak 
roundly  of  a  man's  self  implies  some  lack  of  courage ; 
a  firm  and  lofty  judgment,  and  that  judges  soundly 
and  surely,  makes  use  of  his  own  example  upon  all 
occasions,  as  well  as  those  of  others."  A  person  will 
not  displease  sensible  people  by  saying  "  I  "  so  long 
as  the  self  thus  asserted  stands  for  something,  is 
a  pertinent, significant  "I,"  and  not  merely  a  random 
self -intrusion.  We  are  not  displeased  to  see  an  ath- 
lete roll  up  his  sleeves  and  show  his  muscles,  al- 
though if  a  man  of  only  ordinary  development  did  so 

191 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

it  would  seem  an  impertinence ;  nor  do  we  think  less 
of  Rembrandt  for  painting  his  own  portrait  every 
few  months.  The  "  I "  should  be  functional,  and  so 
long  as  a  man  is  functioning  acceptably  there  can  be 
no  objection  to  his  using  it. 

Indeed,  it  is  a  common  remark  that  the  most  de- 
lightful companions,  or  authors  of  books,  are  often 
the  most  egotistical  in  the  sense  that  they  are  always 
talking  about  themselves.  The  reason  for  this  is  that 
if  the  "  I "  is  interesting  and  agreeable  we  adopt  it 
for  the  time  being  and  make  it  our  own.  Then, 
being  on  the  inside  as  it  were,  it  is  our  own  self  that 
is  so  expansive  and  happy.  We  adopt  Montaigne,  or 
Lamb,  or  Thackeray,  or  Stevenson,  or  Whitman,  or 
Thoreau,  and  think  of  their  words  as  our  words. 
Thus  even  extravagant  self-assertion,  if  the  reader 
can  only  be  led  to  enter  into  it,  may  be  congenial. 
There  may  be  quite  as  much  egotism  in  the  suppres- 
sion of  "  I "  as  in  the  use  of  it,  and  a  forced  and 
obvious  avoidance  of  this  pronoun  often  gives  a  dis- 
agreeable feeling  of  the  writer's  self-consciousness. 
'  In  short,  egotism  is  a  matter  of  character,  not  of 
forms  of  language,  and  if  we  are  egotists  the  fact 
will  out  in  spite  of  any  conventional  rules  of  decorum 
that  we  may  follow. 

It  is  possible  to  maintain  that  "I "  is  a  more  mod- 
est pronoun  than  "  one,"  by  which  some  writers  seem 
to  wish  to  displace  it.  If  a  man  says  "I  think," 
he  speaks  only  for  himself,  while  if  he  says  "one 
thinks,"  he  insinuates  that  the  opinion  advanced  is  a 

192 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  « I » 

general  or  normal  view.  To  say  "  one  does  not  like 
this  picture,"  is  a  more  deadly  attack  upon  it  than  to 
say  "  I  do  not  like  it." 

It  would  seem  also  that  more  freedom  of  self- 
expression  is  appropriate  to  a  book  than  to  ordinary 
intercourse,  because  people  are  not  obliged  to  read 
books,  and  the  author  has  a  right  to  assume  that  his 
readers  are,  in  a  general  way,  sympathetic  with  that 
phase  of  his  personality  that  he  is  trying  to  express. 
If  we  do  not  sympathize  why  do  we  continue  to  read  ? 
We  may,  however,  find  fault  with  him  if  he  departs 
from  that  which  it  is  the  proper  function  of  the  book 
to  assert,  and  intrudes  a  weak  and  irrelevant  "  I  "  in 
which  he  has  no  reason  to  suppose  us  interested.  I 
presume  we  can  all  think  of  books  that  might  ap- 
parently be  improved  by  going  through  them  and 
striking  out  passages  in  which  the  author  has  incon- 
tinently expressed  an  aspect  of  himself  that  has  no 
proper  place  in  the  work. 

In  every  higher  kind  of  production  a  person  needs 
to  understand  and  believe  in  himself — the  more 
thoroughly  the  better.  It  is  precisely  that  in  him 
which  he  feels  to  be  worthy  and  at  the  same  time 
peculiar — the  characteristic — that  it  is  his  duty  to 
produce,  communicate,  and  realize ;  and  he  cannot 
possess  this,  cannot  differentiate  it,  cleanse  it  from 
impurities,  consolidate  and  organize  it,  except  through 
prolonged  and  interested  self-contemplation.  Only 
this  can  enable  him  to  free  himself  from  the  imitative 

193 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

on  the  one  band  and  the  whimsical  on  the  other,  and 
to  stand  forth  without  shame  or  arrogance  for  what 
he  truly  is.  Consequently  every  productive  mind 
must  have  intense  self-feeling;  it  must  delight  to 
contemplate  the  characteristic,  to  gloat  over  it  if 
you  please,  and  in  this  way  learn  to  define,  ar- 
range, and  express  it.  If  one  will  take  up  a  work 
of  literary  art  like,  say,  the  "  Sentimental  Journey," 
he  will  see  that  a  main  source  of  the  charm  of  it 
is  in  the  writer's  assured  and  contented  familiarity 
with  himself.  A  man  who  writes  like  that  has  de- 
lighted to  brood  over  his  thoughts,  jealously  ex- 
cluding everything  not  wholly  congenial  to  him,  and 
gradually  working  out  an  adequate  expression.  And 
the  superiority,  or  at  least  the  difference,  in  tone  and 
manner  of  the  earlier  English  literature  as  compared 
with  that  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  apparently 
connected  with  a  more  assured  and  reposeful  self- 
possession  on  the  part  of  the  older  writers,  made 
possible,  no  doubt,  by  a  less  urgent  general  life. 
The  same  fact  of  self-intensity  goes  with  notable 
production  in  all  sorts  of  literature,  in  every  art,  in 
statesmanship,  philanthropy,  religion ;  in  all  kinds  of 
career. 

Who  does  not  feel  at  times  what  Goethe  calls  the 
joy  of  dwelling  in  one's  self,  of  surrounding  himself 
with  the  fruits  of  his  own  mind,  with  things  he  has 
made,  perhaps,  books  he  has  chosen,  his  familiar 
clothes  and  possessions  of  all  sorts,  with  his  wife, 
children,  and  old  friends,  and  with  his  own  thoughts, 

194 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOTJS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

which  some,  like  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  confess  to 
a  love  of  re-reading  in  books,  letters,  or  diaries  ?  At 
times  even  conscientious  people,  perhaps,  look  kind- 
ly at  their  own  faults,  deficiencies,  and  mannerisms, 
precisely  as  they  would  on  those  of  a  familiar  friend. 
"Without  self-love  in  some  such  sense  as  this  any 
solid  and  genial  growth  of  character  and  accomplish- 
ment is  hardly  possible.  "  Whatever  any  man  has 
to  effect  must  emanate  from  him  like  a  second  self ; 
and  how  could  this  be  possible  were  not  his  first  self 
entirely  pervaded  by  it  ?  "  Nor  is  it  opposed  to  the 
love  of  others.  "  Indeed,"  says  Mr.  Stevenson,  "  he 
who  loves  himself,  not  in  idle  vanity,  but  with  a 
plenitude  of  knowledge,  is  the  best  equipped  of  all 
to  love  his  neighbors." 

Self-love,  Shakespeare  says,  is  not  so  vile  a  sin  as 
self-neglecting  ;  and  many  serious  varieties  of  the 
latter  might  be  specified.  There  is,  for  instance,  a 
culpable  sort  of  self-dreading  cowardice,  not  at  all 
uncommon  with  sensitive  people,  which  shrinks  from 
developing  and  asserting  a  justj*  I "  because  of  the 
stress  of  self-feeling — of  vanity,  uncertainty,  and  mor- 
tification— which  is  foreseen  and  shunned.  If  one  is 
liable  to  these  sentiments  the  proper  course  is  to  bear 
with  them  as  with  other  disturbing  conditions,  rather 
than  to  allow  them  to  stand  in  the  way  of  what,  after 
all,  one  is  born  to  do.  "Know  your  own  bone,"  says 
Thoreau,  "  gnaw  at  it,  bury  it,  unearth  it,  and  gnaw 
it  still."  *  "HI  am  not  I,  who  will  be  ?  " 

*  Letters,  p.  46. 
195 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

A  tendency  to  secretiveness  very  often  goes  with 
this  self-cherishing.  Goethe  was  as  amorous  and 
jealous  about  his  unpublished  works,  in  some  cases, 
as  the  master  of  a  seraglio  ;  fostering  them  for  years, 
and  sometimes  not  telling  his  closest  friends  of  their 
existence.  His  Eugenie,  "  meine  Liebling  Eugenie," 
as  he  calls  it,  was  vulgarized  and  ruined  for  him  by 
his  fatal  mistake  in  publishing  the  first  part  before 
the  whole  was  complete.  It  would  not  be  difficult 
to  show  that  the  same  cherishing  of  favorite  and  pe- 
culiar ideas  is  found  also  in  painters,  sculptors,  and 
effective  persons  of  every  sort.  As  was  suggested 
in  an  earlier  chapter,  this  secretiveness  has  a  social 
reference,  and  few  works  of  art  could  be  carried 
through  if  the  artist  was  convinced  they  would  have 
no  value  in  the  eyes  of  anyone  else.  He  hides  his 
work  that  he  may  purify  and  perfect  it,  thus  making 
it  at  once  more  wholly  and  delightfully  his  own  and 
also  more  valuable  to  the  world  in  the  end.  As  soon 
as  the  painter  exhibits  his  picture  he  loses  it,  in  a 
sense ;  his  system  of  ideas  about  it  becomes  more  or 
less  confused  and  disorganized  by  the  inrush  of  im- 
pressions arising  from  a  sense  of  what  other  people 
think  of  it ;  it  is  no  longer  the  perfect  and  intimate 
thing  which  his  thought  cherished,  but  has  become 
somewhat  crude,  vulgar,  and  disgusting,  so  that  if 
he  is  sensitive  he  may  wish  never  to  look  upon  it 
again.  This,  I  take  it,  is  why  Goethe  could  not  fin- 
ish Eugenie,  and  why  Guignet,  a  French  painter,  of 
whom  Hamerton  speaks,  used  to  alter  or  throw  away 

196 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

a  painting  that  anyone  by  chance  saw  upon  the  easel. 
Likewise  it  was  in  order  more  perfectly  to  know 
and  express  himself — in  his  book  called  "  A  Week  on 
the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers  " — that  Thoreau 
retired  to  Walden  Pond,  and  it  was  doubtless  with 
the  same  view  that  Descartes  quitted  Paris  and  dwelt 
for  eight  years  in  Holland,  concealing  even  his  place 
of  residence.  The  Self,  like  a  child,  is  not  likely  to 
hold  its  own  in  the  world  unless  it  has  had  a  mature 
prenatal  development. 

It  may  be  said,  perhaps,  that  these  views  contra- 
dict a  well-known  fact,  namely,  that  we  do  our  best 
work  when  we  are  not  self-conscious,  not  thinking 
about  effect,  but  filled  with  disinterested  and  imper- 
sonal passion.  Such  truth  as  there  is  in  this  idea  is, 
however,  in  no  way  inconsistent  with  what  has  just 
been  said.  It  is  true  that  a  certain  abandonment 
and  self-forgetting  is  often  characteristic  of  high 
thought  and  noble  action.  But  there  would  be  no 
production,  no  high  thought  or  noble  action,  if  we 
relied  entirely  upon  these  impassioned  moments 
without  preparing  ourselves  to  have  them.  It  is 
only  as  we  have  self-consciousness  that  we  can  be 
aware  of  those  special  tendencies  which  we  assert 
in  production,  or  can  learn  how  to  express  them, 
or  even  have  the  desire  to  do  so.  The  moment  of 
insight  would  be  impossible  without  the  persistent 
self-conscious  endeavor  that  preceded  it,  nor  has  en- 
thusiastic action  any  value  without  a  similar  disci- 
pline. 

197 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  is  true,  also,  that  in  sensitive  persons  self-feeling 
often  reaches  a  pitch  of  irritability  that  impedes  pro- 
duction, or  vulgarizes  it  through  too  great  deference 
to  opinion.  But  this  is  a  matter  of  the  control  and 
discipline  of  particular  aspects  of  the  self  rather  than 
of  its  general  tendency.  When  undisciplined  this 
sort  of  feeling  may  be  futile  or  harmful,  just  as  fear, 
whose  function  is  to  cause  us  to  avoid  danger,  may 
defeat  its  own  aim  through  excessive  and  untimely 
operation,  and  anger  may  so  excite  us  that  we  lose 
the  power  of  inflicting  injury. 

If  the  people  of  our  time  and  country  are  pecul- 
iarly selfish,  as  is  sometimes  alleged,  it  is  certainly 
not  because  a  too  rigid  or  clearly  differentiated  type 
of  self-consciousness  is  general  among  us.  On  the 
contrary,  our  most  characteristic  fault  is  perhaps  a 
certain  superficiality  and  vagueness  of  character  and 
aims ;  and  this  seems  to  spring  from  a  lack  of  collect- 
edness  and  self-definition,  which  in  turn  is  connected 
with  the  too  eager  mode  of  life  common  among  us. 
I  doubt,  however,  whether  egotism,  which  is  essen- 
tially a  falling  short  of  moral  standards,  can  be  said 
to  be  more  prevalent  in  one  age  than  another. 

In  Mr.  Boget's  "Thesaurus"  may  be  found  about 
six  pages  devoted  to  words  denoting  "  Extrinsic  per- 
sonal affections,  or  personal  affections  derived  from 
the  opinions  or  feelings  of  others,"  an  expression 
which  seems  to  mean  nearly  the  same  as  is  here  meant 
by  social  self-feeling  of  the  reflected  or  looking-glass 

198 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

sort.  Although  the  compiler  fishes  with  a  wide  net 
and  brings  in  much  that  seems  hardly  to  belong  here, 
the  number  of  words  in  common  use  indicating  differ- 
ent varieties  of  this  sort  of  feeling  is  surprising  and 
suggestive.  One  cannot  but  think,  What  insight  and 
what  happy  boldness  of  invention  went  to  the  devis- 
ing of  all  these  terms !  What  a  psychologist  is  lan- 
guage, that  thus  labels  and  treasures  up  so  many 
subtle  aspects  of  the  human  mind ! 

We  may  profitably  distinguish,  as  others  have  done, 
two  general  attitudes— the  aggressive  or  self-assertive 
and  the  shrinking  or  humble.  The  first  indicates  that 
one  thinks  favorably  of  himself  and  tries  to  impose 
that  favorable  thought  on  others ;  the  second,  that 
he  accepts  and  yields  to  a  depreciating  reflection  of 
himself,  and  feels  accordingly  diminished  and  abased. 
Pride  would,  of  course,  be  an  example  of  the  first  way 
of  feeling  and  acting,  humility  of  the  second. 

But  there  are  many  phases  of  the  aggressive  self,  and 
these,  again,  might  be  classified  something  as  follows : 
first,  in  response  to  imagined  approval  we  have  pride, 
vanity,  or  self-respect ;  second,  in  response  to  imag- 
ined censure  we  have  various  sorts  of  resentment ; 
and  the  humble  self  might  be  treated  in  a  similar 
manner. 

Pride  and  vanity  are  names  which  are  commonly 
applied  only  to  forms  of  self-approval  that  strike  us 
as  disagreeable  or  egotistical ;  but  they  may  be  used 
in  a  somewhat  larger  sense  to  indicate  simply  a  more 

199 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

or  less  stable  attitude  of  the  social  self  toward  the 
world  in  which  it  is  reflected ;  the  distinction  being 
of  the  same  sort  as  that  between  unstable  and  rigid 
egotism  already  suggested. 

These  differences  in  stability,  which  are  of  great 
importance  in  the  study  of  social  personality,  are  per- 
haps connected  with  the  contrast  between  the  more 
receptive  and  the  more  constructive  types  of  mind. 
Although  in  the  best  minds  reception  and  construc- 
tion are  harmoniously  united,  and  although  it  may 
be  shown  that  they  are  in  a  measure  mutually  de- 
pendent, so  that  neither  can  be  perfect  without  the 
other,  yet  as  a  rule  they  are  not  symmetrically  de- 
veloped, and  this  lack  of  symmetry  corresponds  to 
divergences  of  personal  character.  Minds  of  one  sort 
are,  so  to  speak,  endogenous  or  ingrowing  in  their  nat- 
ural bent,  while  those  of  another  are  exogenous  or 
outgrowing ;  that  is  to  say,  those  of  the  former  kind 
have  a  relatively  strong  turn  for  working  up  old  mate- 
rial, as  compared  with  that  for  taking  in  new  ;  cogita- 
tion is  more  pleasant  to  them  than  observation ;  they 
prefer  the  sweeping  and  garnishing  of  their  house  to 
the  confusion  of  entertaining  visitors;  while  of  the 
other  sort  the  opposite  of  this  may  be  said.  Now,  the 
tendency  of  the  endogenous  or  inward  activities  is  to 
secure  unity  and  stability  of  thought  and  character  at 
the  possible  expense  of  openness  and  adaptability; 
because  the  energy  goes  chiefly  into  systematization, 
and  in  attaining  this  the  mind  is  pretty  sure  to  limit 
its  new  impressions  to  those  that  do  not  disturb  too 

200 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  « I " 

much  that  unity  and  system  it  loves  so  well.  These 
traits  are,  of  course,  manifested  in  the  person's  relation 
to  others.  The  friends  he  has  "  and  their  acceptance 
tried  "  he  grapples  to  his  soul  with  hooks  of  steel,  but 
is  likely  to  be  unsympathetic  and  hard  toward  influ- 
ences of  a  novel  character.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
exogenous  or  outgrowing  mind,  more  active  near  the 
periphery  than  toward  the  centre,  is  open  to  all 
sorts  of  impressions,  eagerly  taking  in  new  material, 
which  is  likely  never  to  get  much  arrangement ;  caring 
less  for  the  order  of  the  house  than  that  it  should  be 
full  of  guests,  quickly  responsive  to  personal  influ- 
ences, but  lacking  that  depth  and  tenacity  of  sympa- 
thy that  the  other  sort  of  mind  shows  with  people 
congenial  with  itself. 

Pride,*  then,  is  the  form  social  self-approval  takes 
in  the  more  rigid  or  self-sufficient  sort  of  minds ;  the 
person  who  feels  it  is  assured  that  he  stands  well  with 
others  whose  opinion  he  cares  for,  and  does  not  im- 
agine any  humiliating  image  of  himself,  but  carries 
his  mental  and  social  stability  to  such  a  degree  that 
it  is  likely  to  narrow  his  soul  by  warding  off  the  en- 
livening pricks  of  doubt  and  shame.  By  no  means 
independent  of  the  world,  it  is,  after  all,  distinctly  a 
social  sentiment,  and  gets  its  standards  ultimately 
from  social  custom  and  opinion.  But  the  proud  man 
is  not  immediately  dependent  upon  what  others  think ; 
he  has  worked  over  his  reflected  self  in  his  mind  until 

*  Compare  Stanley,  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling,  p. 
271  et  seq. 

201 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

it  is  a  steadfast  portion  of  his  thought,  an  idea  and 
conviction  apart,  in  some  measure,  from  its  external 
origin.  Hence  this  sentiment  requires  time  for  its 
development  and  flourishes  in  mature  age  rather  than 
in  the  open  and  growing  period  of  youth.  A  man 
who  is  proud  of  his  rank,  his  social  position,  his  pro- 
fessional eminence,  his  benevolence,  or  his  integrity, 
is  in  the  habit  of  contemplating  daily  an  agreeable 
and  little  changing  image  of  himself  as  he  believes  he 
appears  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  This  image  is  prob- 
ably distorted,  since  pride  deceives  by  a  narroAving  of 
the  imagination,  but  it  is  stable,  and  because  it  is  so, 
because  he  feels  sure  of  it,  he  is  not  disturbed  by  any 
passing  breath  of  blame.  If  he  is  aware  of  such  a 
thing  at  all  he  dismisses  it  as  a  vagary  of  no  impor- 
tance, feeling  the  best  judgment  of  the  world  to  be 
securely  in  his  favor.  If  he  should  ever  lose  this  con- 
viction, if  some  catastrophe  should  shatter  the  image, 
he  would  be  a  broken  man,  and,  if  far  gone  in  years, 
would  perhaps  not  raise  his  head  again. 

In  a  sense  pride  is  strength ;  that  is,  it  implies  a 
stable  and  consistent  character  which  can  be  counted 
on ;  it  will  do  its  work  without  watching,  and  be  hon- 
orable in  its  dealings,  according  to  its  cherished 
standards ;  it  has  always  a  vigorous,  though  narrow, 
conscience.  On  the  other  hand,  it  stunts  a  man's 
growth  by  closing  his  mind  to  progressive  influences, 
and  so  in  the  long  run  may  be  a  source  of  weakness,  j 
Burke  said,  I  believe,  that  no  man  ever  had  a  point 
of  pride  that  was  not  injurious  to  him  ;  and  perhaps 

202 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

this  was  what  he  meant.  Pride  also  causes,  as  a  rule, 
a  deeper  animosity  on  the  part  of  others  than  vanity  ; 
it  may  be  hated  but  hardly  despised ;  yet  many  would 
rather  live  with  it  than  with  vanity,  because,  after  all, 
one  knows  where  to  find  it,  and  so  can  adapt  himself 
to  it.  The  other  is  so  whimsical  that  it  is  impossible 
to  foresee  what  turn  it  will  take  next. 

Language  seldom  distinguishes  clearly  between  a 
way  of  feeling  and  its  visible  expression ;  and  so  the 
word  vanity,  which  means  primarily  emptiness,  indi- 
cates Either  a Tweak  or  hollow  appearance  of  worth 
put  on  in  the  endeavor  to  impress  others,  or  the  state 
of  feeling  that  goes  with  it.  It  is  the  form  social  self- 
approval  naturally  takes  in  a  somewhat  unstable  mind, 
not  sure  of  its  image.  The  vain  man,  in  his  more 
confident  moments,  sees  a  delightful  reflection  of  him- 
self, but  knowing  that  it  is  transient,  he  is  afraid  it 
will  change.  He  has  not  fixed  it,  as  the  proud  man 
has,  by  incorporation  with  a  stable  habit  of  thought, 
but,  being  immediately  dependent  for  it  upon  others, 
is  at  their  mercy  and  very  vulnerable,  living  in  the 
frailest  of  glass  houses  which  may  be  shattered  at  any 
moment ;  and,  in  fact,  this  catastrophe  happens  so 
often  that  he  gets  somewhat  used  to  it  and  soon  re- 
covers from  it.  While  the  image  which  the  proud  per- 
son contemplates  is  fairly  consistent,  and,  though  dis- 
torted, has  a  solid  basis  in  his  character,  so  that  he  will 
not  accept  praise  for  qualities  he  does  not  believe  him- 
self to  possess ;  vanity  has  no  stable  idea  of  itself  and  I 
will  swallow  any  shining  bait.  The  person  will  gloat 

203 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

now  on  one  pleasing  reflection  of  himself,  now  on  an- 
other, trying  to  mimic  each  in  its  turn,  and  becoming, 
so  far  as  he  can,  what  any  flatterer  says  he  is,  or  what 
any  approving  person  seems  to  think  he  is.  It  is 
characteristic  of  him  to  be  so  taken  up  with  his  own 
image  in  the  other's  mind  that  he  is  hypnotized  by  it, 
as  it  were,  and  sees  it  magnified,  distorted,  and  out  of 
its  true  relation  to  the  other  contents  of  that  mind. 
He  does  not  see,  as  so  often  happens,  that  he  is  be- 
ing managed  and  made  a  fool  of ;  he  "  gives  himself 
away  " — fatuity  being  of  the  essence  of  vanity.  On 
the  other  hand,  and  for  the  same  reason,  a  vain  per- 
son is  frequently  tortured  by  groundless  imaginings 
that  someone  has  misunderstood  him,  slighted  him, 
insulted  him,  or  otherwise  mistreated  his  social  effigy. 

Of  course  the  immediate  result  of  vanity  is  weak- 
ness, as  that  of  pride  is  strength  ;  but  on  a  wider  view 
there  is  something  to  be  said  for  it.  Goethe  exclaims 
in  Wilhelm  Meister,  "  Would  to  heaven  all  men  were 
vain!  that  is  were  vain  with  clear  perception,  with 
moderation,  and  in  a  proper  sense  :  we  should  then, 
in  the  cultivated  world,  have  happy  times  of  it. 
Women,  it  is  told  us,  are  vain  from  the  very  cradle  ; 
yet  does  it  not  become  them  ?  do  they  not  please  us 
the  more  ?  How  can  a  youth  form  himself  if  he  is  not 
vain  ?  An  empty,  hollow  nature  will,  by  this  means, 
at  least  contrive  to  give  itself  an  outward  show,  and  a 
proper  man  will  soon  train  himself  from  the  outside 
inwards."  *  That  is  to  say,  vanity,  in  moderation, 

*  Wilhelm  Meister's  Travels,  Chap.  XII.,  Carlyle's  Translation. 
204 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

may  indicate  an  openness,  a  sensibility,  a  teachability, 
that  is  a  good  augury  of  growth.  In  youth,  at  least, 
it  is  much  preferable  to  pride. 

It  is  the  obnoxious,  or  in  sonjei. way  conspiciiousf 
manifestations  of  .self-feeling  that  are  likely  to  receive 
special  names.  Accordingly,  there  are  many  words 
and  phrases  for  different  aspects  of  pride  and  vanity, 
while  a^moderate  ancl  balanced  self-respect  doss  not 
attract  nomenclature.  One  who  has  this  is  more^ 
open  and  flexible  in  feeling  and  behavior  than  one 
who  is  proud  ;  the  image  is  not  stereotyped,  he  is  sub- 
ject to  humility  ;  while  at  the  same  time  he  does  not 
show  the  fluttering  anxiety  about  his  appearance  that 
goes  with  vanity,  but  has  stable  ways  of  thinking 
about  the  image,  as  about  other  matters,  and  cannot 
be  upset  by  passing  phases  of  praise  or  blame.  In 
fact,  the  healthy  life  of  the  self  requires  the  same 
co-operation  of  continuity  with  change  that  marks 
normal  development  everywhere ;  there  must  be  vari- 
ability, openness,  freedom,  on  a  basis  of  organization  : 
too  rigid  organization  meaning  fixity  and  death,  and 
the  lack  of  it  weakness  or  anarchy.  The  self-respect- 
ing man  values  others'  judgments  and  occupies  his 
mind  with  them  a  great  deal,  but  he  keeps  his  head, 
he  discriminates  and  selects,  considers  all  suggestions 
with  a  view  to  his  character,  and  will  not  submit  to 
influences  not  in  the  line  of  his  development.  Be- 
cause he  conceives  his  self  as  a  stable  and  continuing 
whole  he  always  feels  the  need  to  be,  and  cannot  be 

205 


guilty  of  that  separation  between  being  and  seeming 
that  constitutes  affectation.  For  instance,  a  self-re- 
specting scholar,  deferent  to  the  standards  set  by  the 
opinions  of  others,  might  wish  to  have  read  all  the 
books  on  a  certain  subject,  and  feel  somewhat 
ashamed  not  to  have  done  so,  but  he  could  not  affect 
to  have  read  them  when  he  had  not.  The  pain  of 
breaking  the  unity  of  his  thought,  of  disfiguring  his 
picture  of  himself  as  a  sincere  and  consistent  man, 
would  overbalance  any  gratification  he  might  have  in 
the  imagined  approval  of  his  thoroughness.  If  he 
were  vain  he  would  possibly  affect  to  have  read  the 
books ;  while  if  arrogant  he  might  feel  no  compunc- 
tions for  avowed  ignorance  of  them. 
,  Common-sense  approves  a  just  mingling  of  defer- 
!  ence  and  self -poise  in  the  attitude  of  one  man  toward 
others :  while  the  unyielding  are  certainly  repellent, 
the  too  deferent  are  nearly  as  much  so ;  they  are 
tiresome  and  even  disgusting,  because  they  seem 
flimsy  and  unreal,  and  do  not  give  that  sense  of  con- 
tact with  something  substantial  and  interesting  that 
we  look  for. 

' ' you  have  missed 

The  manhood  that  should  yours  resist, 
Its  complement." 

We  like  the  manner  of  a  person  who  appears  in- 
terested in  what  we  say  and  do,  and  not  indifferent  to 
our  opinion,  but  has  at  the  same  time  an  evident 
reserve  of  stability  and  independence.  It  is  much 

206 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

the  same  with  a  writer ;  we  require  of  him  a  bold 
and  determined  statement  of  his  own  special  view — 
that  is  what  he  is  here  for — and  yet,  with  this,  an  air 
of  hospitality,  and  an  appreciation  that  he  is  after  all 
only  a  small  part  of  a  large  world. 

With  some,  then,  the  self-image  is  an  imitative 
sketch  in  the  supposed  style  of  the  last  person  they 
have  talked  to ;  with  others,  it  is  a  rigid,  traditional 
thing,  a  lifeless  repetition  that  has  lost  all  relation  to 
the  forces  that  originally  moulded  it,  like  the  Byzan- 
tine madonnas  before  the  time  of  Cimabue ;  with 
others  again  it  is  a  true  work  of  art  in  which  in- 

UywWMWi'J  *->  "**™*w*~*wr~-~tr~-n~^^*'^'^',t.M*&n.  *f  .••W"'*y^t"^'^-^iK.   .        „.-*•«- "*'-*'"i"">*J*>i» 

dividual  tendencies  and  the  influence  of  masters 
mingle  in  a  harmonious  whole  ;  but  all  of  us  have  it, 
unless  we  are  so  deficient  in  imagination  as  to  be  less 
than  human.  When  we  speak  of  a  person  as  inde- 
pendent of  opinion,  or  self-sufficient,  we  can  only 
mean  that,  being  of  a  constructive  and  stable  char-  \ 
acter,  he  does  not  have  to  recur  every  day  to  the 
visible  presence  of  his  approvers,  but  can  supply 
their  places  by  imagination,  can  hold  on  to  some 
influences  and  reject  others,  choose  his  leaders,  indi- 
vidualize his  conformity ;  and  so  work  out  a  char- 
acterfstic  and  fairly  consistent  career.  The  self 
must  be  built  up  by  the  aid  of  social  suggestions, 
just  as  all  higher  thought  is. 

Honor  is  a  finer  kind  of  self-respect.  It  is  used  to 
mean  either  something  one  feels  regarding  himself, 
or  something  that  other  people  think  and  feel  regard- 
ing him,  and  so  illustrates  by  the  accepted  use  of 

207 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL   OEDER 

language  the  fact  that  the  private  and  social  aspects 
of  self  are  inseparable.  One's  honor,  as  he  feels  it, 
and  his  honor  in  the  sense  of  honorable  repute,  as  he 
conceives  it  to  exist  in  the  minds  of  others  whose 
opinion  he  cares  for,  are  two  aspects  of  the  same 
thing.  No  one  can  permanently  maintain  a  standard 
of  honor  in  his  own  mind  if  he  does  not  conceive  of 
some  other  mind  or  minds  as  sharing  and  corrob- 
orating this  standard.  If  his  immediate  environ- 
ment is  degrading  he  may  have  resort  to  books  or 
memory  in  order  that  his  imagination  may  construct 
a  better  environment  of  nobler  people  to  sustain  his 
standard  ;  but  if  he  cannot  do  this  it  is  sure  to  fall. 
Sentiments  of  higher  good  or  right,  like  other  senti- 
ments, find  source  and  renewal  in  intercourse.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  cannot  separate  the  idea  of  honor 
from  that  of  a  sincere  and  stable  private  character. 
We  cannot  form  a  habit  of  thought  about  what  is 
admirable,  though  it  be  derived  from  others,  without 
creating  a  mental  standard.  A  healthy  mind  cannot 
strive  for  outward  honor  without,  in  some  measure, 
developing  an  inward  conscience — training  himself 
from  the  outside  in,  as  Goethe  says. 

It  is  the  result  of  physiological  theories  of  ethics 
— certainly  not  intended  by  the  authors  of  those 
theories — to  make  the  impulses  of  an  ideal  self,  like 
the  sentiment  of  honor,  seem  far-fetched,  extravagant 
and  irrational.  They  have  to  be  justified  by  an  elab- 
orate course  of  reasoning  which  does  not  seem  very 
convincing  after  all.  No  such  impression,  however, 

208 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

could  result  from  the  direct  observation  of  social 
life.  In  point  of  fact,  a  man's  honor,  as  he  conceives 
it,  is  his  self  in  its  most  immediate  and  potent  real- 
ity, swaying  his  conduct  without  waiting  upon  any 
inquiry  into  its  physiological  antecedents.  The  pref- 
erence of  honor  to  life  is  not  at  all  a  romantic  ex- 
ception in  human  behavior,  but  something  quite 
characteristic  of  man  on  a  really  human  level.  A 
despicable  or  degenerate  person  may  save  his  body 
alive  at  the  expense  of  honor,  and  so  may  almost 
anyone  in  moments  of  panic  or  other  kind  of  de- 
moralization, but  the  typical  man,  in  his  place 
among  his  fellows  and  with  his  social  sentiments 
about  him,  will  not  do  so.  We  read  in  history  of 
many  peoples  conquered  because  they  lacked  dis- 
cipline and  strategy,  or  because  their  weapons  were 
inferior,  but  we  seldom  read  of  any  who  were  really 
cowardly  in  the  sense  that  they  would  not  face  death 
in  battle.  And  the  readiness  to  face  death  common- 
ly means  that  the  sentiment  of  honor  dominates  the 
impulses  of  terror  and  pain.  All  over  the  ancient 
world  the  Boman  legions  encountered  men  who 
shunned  death  no  more  than  themselves,  but  were 
not  so  skilful  in  inflicting  it;  and  in  Mexico  and 
Peru  the  natives  died  by  thousands  in  a  desperate 
struggle  against  the  Spanish  arms.  The  earliest  ac- 
counts we  have  of  our  own  Germanic  ancestors  show 
a  state  of  feeling  and  practice  that  made  self-preser- 
vation, in  a  material  sense,  strictly  subordinate  to 
honor.  "  Death  is  better  for  every  clansman  than 

209 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

coward  life,"  says  Beowulf,*  and  there  seems  no 
doubt  whatever  that  this  was  a  general  principle  of 
action,  so  that  cowardice  was  a  rare  phenomenon. 
In  modern  life  we  see  the  same  subordination  of 
sensation  to  sentiment  among  soldiers  and  in  a  hun- 
dred other  careers  involving  bodily  peril — not  as  a 
heroic  exception  but  as  the  ordinary  practice  of  plain 
men.  We  see  it  also  in  the  general  readiness  to 
undergo  all  sorts  of  sensual  pains  and  privations 
rather  than  cease  to  be  respectable  in  the  eyes  of 
other  people.  It  is  well  known,  for  instance,  that 
among  the  poor  thousands  endure  cold  and  partial 
starvation  rather  than  lose  their  self-respect  by  beg- 
ging. In  short,  it  does  not  seem  too  favorable  a 
view  of  mankind  to  say  that  under  normal  conditions 
their  minds  are  ruled  by  the  sentiment  of  Norfolk  : 

"Mine  honor  is  my  life:  both  grow  in  one  ; 
Take  honor  from  me  and  my  life  is  done." 

If  we  once  grasp  the  fact  that  the  self  is  primarily  a 
social,  ideal,  or  imaginative  fact,  and  not  a  sensual 
fact,  all  this  appears  quite  natural  and  not  in  need  of 
special  explanation. 

In  relation  to  the  highest  phases  of  individuality 
self-respect  becomes  self -reverence,  in  the  sense  of 
Tennyson,  when  he  says  : 

"Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power. "  t 

*  Quoted  by  Gummere,  Germanic  Origins,  p.  266. 
f  CEnone. 

210 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

or  of  Goethe  when,  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  second 
book  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wander jahre,"  he  names 
self-reverence — Elirfurclit  vor  sick  selbst — as  the  high- 
est of  the  four  reverences  taught  to  youth  in  his 
ideal  system  of  education.*  Emerson  uses  self-re- 
liance in  a  similar  sense,  in  that  memorable  essay 
the  note  of  which  is  "  Trust  thyself,  every  heart 
vibrates  to  that  iron  string,"  and  throughout  his 
works. 

Self-reverence,  as  I  understand  the  matter,  means 
rcvereiice]ToE;it  higher  or  ideal  self;  ajre_alJlI,"  be- 
cause it  is  based  on  what  the  individual  actually  is, 
as  only  he  himself  can  know  and  appropriate  it,  but 
a  better  "  I  "  of  aspiration  rather  than  attainment ; 
it  is  simply  the  best  he  can  make  out  of  life.  Eev- 
~erence  for  it  implies,  as  Emerson  urges,  resistajftce  to 
friends  and  counsellors  and  to  any  influence  that  the 
mind  honestly  rejects  as  inconsistent  with  itself;  a 
man  must  feel  that  the  final  arbiter  is  within  him 
and  not  outside  of  him  in  some  master,  living  or  dead 
as  conventional  religion,  for  instance,  necessarily 
teaches.  Nevertheless  this  highest  self  is  a  social 
self,  in  that  it  is  a  product  of  constructive  imagi- 
nation working  with  the  materials  which  social  ex- 
perience supplies.  Our  ideals  of  personal  character 
are  built  up  out  of  thoughts  and  sentiments  devel- 
oped by  intercourse,  and  very  largely  by  imagining 
how  our  selves  would  appear  in  the  minds  of  persons 
we  look  up  to.  These  are  not  necessarily  living  per- 
*  Travels,  chap.  10,  in  Carlyle's  translation. 
211 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sons ;  anyone  that  is  at  all  real,  that  is  imaginable, 
to  us,  becomes  a  possible  occasion  of  social  self-feel- 
ing ;  and  idealizing  and  aspiring  persons  live  largely 
in  the  imagined  presence  of  masters  and  heroes  to 
whom  they  refer  their  own  life  for  comment  and  im- 
provement. This  is  particularly  true  of  youth,  when 
ideals  are  forming ;  later  the  personal  element  in 
these  ideals,  having  performed  its  function  of  sug- 
gesting and  vivifying  them,  is  likely  to  fade  out  of 
consciousness  and  leave  only  habits  and  principles 
whose  social  origin  is  forgotten. 

Resentment,  the  attitude  which  an  aggressive  self 
takes  in  response  to  imagined  depreciation,  may  be 
regarded  as  self-feeling  with  a  coloring  of  anger  ;  in- 
deed, the  relation  between  self-feeling  and  particular 
emotions  like  anger  and  fear  is  so  close  that  the  lat- 
ter might  be  looked  upon  as  simply  specialized  kinds 
of  the  former ;  it  makes  little  difference  whether  we 
take  this  view  or  think  of  them  as  distinct,  since 
such  divisions  must  always  be  arbitrary.  I  shall  say 
more  of  this  sentiment  in  the  next  chapter. 

If  a  person  conceives  his  image  as  depreciated  in 
the  mind  of  another ;  and  if,  instead  of  maintaining 
an  aggressive  attitude  and  resenting  that  depreci- 
ation, he  yields  to  it  and  accepts  the  image  and  the 
judgment  upon  it ;  then  he  feels  and  shows  something 
in  the  way  of  humility.  Here  again  we  have  a  great 
variety  of  nomenclature,  indicating  different  shades 
of  humble  feeling  and  behavior,  such  as  shame,  con- 

212 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

fusion,  abasement,  humiliation,  mortification,  meek- 
ness, baslifulness,  diffidence,  shyness,  being  out  of 
countenance,  abashed  or  crestfallen,  contrition,  com- 
punction, remorse,  and  so  on. 

Humility,  like  self-approval,  has  forms  that  con- 
sist with  a  high  type  of  character  and  are  felt  to  be 
praiseworthy,  and  others  that  are  felt  to  be  base. 
There  is  a  sort  that  goes  with  vanity  and  indicates 
instability,  an  excessive  and  indiscriminate  yielding 
to  another's  view  of  one's  self.  We  wish  a  man  to 
be  humble  only  before  what,  from  his  own  character- 
istic point  of  view,  is  truly  superior.  His  humility 
should  imply.,self-respect ;  it  should  be  that  attitude 
of  deference  which  a  stable  but  growing  character 
takes  in  the  presence  of  whatever  embodies  its  ideals. 
Every  outreaching  person  has  masters  in  whose  imag- 
ined presence  he  drops  resistance  and  becomes  like 
clay  in  the  hands  of  the  potter,  that  they  may  make 
something  better  of  him.  Hejloes  this  from  a  feel- 
ing that  the  master  is  more  himself  than  he  is  ;  there 
is  a  receptive  enthusiasm,  a  sense  of  new  life  that 
swallows  up  the  old  self  and  makes  his  ordinary 
personality  appear  tedious,  base  and  despicable. 
Humility  of  this  sort  goes  with  self -reverence,  be- 
cause a  sense  of  the  higher  or  ideal  self  plunges  the 
present  and  commonplace  self  into  humility.  The 
man  aims  at  "  so  high  an  ideal  that  he  always  feels 
his  unworthiness  in  his  own  sight  and  that  of  others, 
though  aware  of  his  own  desert  by  the  ordinary 
standards  of  his  community,  country,  or  genera- 

213 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tion."  *  But  a  humility  that  is  self-abandonment, 
a  cringing  before  opinion  alien  to  one's  self,  is  felt  to 
be  mere  cowardice  and  servility. 

Books  of  the  inner  life  praise  and  enjoin  lowliness, 
contrition,  repentance,  self-abnegation ;  but  it  is  ap- 
parent to  all  thoughtful  readers  that  the  sort  of 
humility  inculcated  is  quite  consistent  with  the  self- 
reverence  of  Goethe  or  the  self-reliance  of  Emerson 
— comes,  indeed,  to  much  the  same  thing.  The  "  Im- 
itatio  Christi  "  is  the  type  of  such  teaching,  yet  it  is 
a  manly  book,  and  the  earlier  part  especially  contains 
exhortations  to  self -trust  worthy  of  Emerson.  "  Certa 
viriliter,"  the  writer  says,  "  consuetude  cousuetudine 
vincitur.  Si  tu  scis  homines  dimittere,  ipsi  bene  te 
dimittent  tua  facta  facere."f  The  yielding  con- 
stantly enjoined  is  either  to  God — that  is,  to  an  ideal 
personality  developed  in  one's  own  mind — or,  if  to 
men,  it  is  a  submission  to  external  rule  which  is 
designed  to  leave  the  will  free  for  what  are  regarded 
as  its  higher  functions.  The  whole  teaching  tends  to 
the  aggrandizement  of  an  ideal  but  intensely  private 
self,  worked  out  in  solitary  meditation — to  insure 
which  worldly  ambition  is  to  be  renounced — and 
symbolized  as  God,  conscience,  or  grace.  The  just 
criticism  of  the  doctrine  that  Thomas  stands  for  is 
not  that  it  depreciates  manhood  and  self-reliance,  but 

*  Stanley,  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling,  p.  280. 

f  "  Strive  manfully ;  habit  is  subdued  by  habit.  If  you  know  how 
to  dismiss  men,  they  also  will  dismiss  you,  to  do  your  own  things." 
— De  Imitatione  Christi,  book  i.,  chap.  21,  par.  2 

214 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  « I " 

that  it  calls  these  away  from  the  worldly  activities 
where  they  are  so  much  needed,  and  exercises  them 
in  a  region  of  abstract  imagination.  No  healthy 
mind  can  cast  out  self-assertion  and  the  idea  of  per- 
sonal freedom,  however  the  form  of  expression  may 
seem  to  deny  these  things,  and  accordingly  the  Imita- 
tion, and  still  more  the  New  Testament,  are  full  of 
them.  Where  there  is  no  self -feeling,  no  ambition  of 
any  sort,  there  is  no  efficacy  or  significance.  To 
lose  the  sense  of  a  separate,  productive,  resisting  self, 
would  be  to  melt  and  merge  and  cease  to  be. 

Healthy,  balanced  minds,  of  only  medium  sensi- 
bility, in  a  congenial  environment  and  occupied 
with  wholesome  activity,  keep  the  middle  road  of 
self-respect  and  reasonable  ambition.  They  may 
require  no  special  effort,  no  conscious  struggle  with 
recalcitrant  egotism,  to  avoid  heart-burning,  jealousy, 
arrogance,  anxious  running  after  approval,  and 
other  maladies  of  the  social  self.  With  enough 
self-feeling  to  stimulate  and  not  enough  to  torment 
him,  with  a  social  circle  appreciative  but  not  flatter- 
ing, with  good  health  and  moderate  success,  a  man 
may  go  through  life  with  very  little  use  for  the  moral 
and  religious  weapons  that  have  been  wrought  for  the 
repression  of  a  contumacious  self.  There  are  many, 
particularly  in  an  active,  hopeful,  and  materially 
prosperous  time  like  this,  who  have  little  experience 
of  inner  conflict  and  no  interest  in  the  literature  and 
doctrine  that  relate  to  it. 

215 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

But  nearly  all  persons  of  the  finer,  more  sensitive 
sort  find  the  social  self  at  times  a  source  of  passion 
and  pain.  In  so  far  as  a  man  amounts  to  anything, 
stands  for  anything,  is  truly  an  individual,  he  has  an 
ego  about  which  his  passions  cluster,  and  to  aggran- 
dize which  must  be  a  principal  aim  with  him.  But 
the  very  fact  that  the  self  is  the  object  of  our  schemes 
and  endeavors  makes  it  a  centre  of  mental  disturb- 
ance :  its  suggestions  are  of  effort,  responsibility, 
doubt,  hope,  and  fear.  Just  as  a  man  cannot  enjoy 
the  grass  and  trees  in  his  own  grounds  with  quite 
the  peace  and  freedom  that  he  can  those  abroad, 
because  they  remind  him  of  improvements  that  he 
ought  to  make  and  the  like ;  so  any  part  of  the  self  is, 
in  its  nature,  likely  to  be  suggestive  of  exertion  rather 
than  rest.  Moreover,  it  would  seem  that  self-feeling, 
though  pleasant  in  normal  duration  and  intensity,  is 
disagreeable  in  excess,  like  any  other  sort  of  feeling. 
Diie  Teason  why  we  get  tired  of  ourselves  is  simply 
that  we  have  exhausted  our  capacity  for  experiencing 
with  pleasure  a  certain  kind  of  emotion. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  self  that  is  most  importunate 
is  a  reflection,  largely,  from  the  minds  of  others. 
This  phase  of  self  is  related  to  character  very  much 
as  credit  is  related  to  the  gold  and  other  securities 
upon  which  it  rests.  It  easily  and  Avilliugly  expands, 
in  most  of  us,  and  is  liable  to  sudden,  irrational,  and 
grievous  collapses.  We  live  on,  cheerful,  self-confi- 
dent, conscious  of  helping  make  the  world  go  round, 
until  in  some  rude  hour  we  learn  that  we  do  not 

216 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

stand  so  well  as  we  thought  we  did,  that  the  image  of 
us  is  tarnished.  Perhaps  we  do  something,  quite 
naturally,  that  we  find  the  social  order  is  set  against, 
or  perhaps  it  is  the  ordinary  course  of  our  life  that  is 
not  so  well  regarded  as  we  supposed.  At  any  rate, 
we  find  with  a  chill  of  terror  that  the  world  is  cold 
and  strange,  and  that  our  self-esteem,  self-confidence, 
and  hope,  being  chiefly  founded  upon  opinions, 
attributed  to  others,  go  down  in  the  crash.  Our 
reason  may  tell  us  that  we  are  no  less  worthy  than 
we  were  before,  but  dread  and  doubt  do  not  permit 
us  to  believe  it.  The  sensitive  mind  will  certainly 
suffer,  because  of  the  instability  of  opinion.  Cadit 
cum  labili.  As  social  beings  we  live  with  our  eyes 
upon  our  reflection,  but  have  no  assurance  of  the 
tranquillity  of  the  waters  in  which  we  see  it.  In  the 
days  of  witchcraft  it  used  to  be  believed  that  if  one 
person  secretly  made  a  waxen  image  of  another  and 
stuck  pins  into  the  image,  its  counterpart  would 
suffer  tortures,  and  that  if  the  image  was  melted  the 
person  would  die.  This  superstition  is  almost  realized 
in  the  relation  between  the  private  self  and  its  social 
reflection.  They  seem  separate  but  are  darkly  united, 
and  what  is  done  to  the  one  is  done  to  the  other. 

If  a  person  of  energetic  and  fine-strung  temper- 
ament is  neither  vain  nor  proud,  and  lives  equably 
without  suffering  seriously  from  mortification,  jeal- 
ousy, and  the  like ;  it  is  because  he  has  in  some  way 
learned  to  discipline  and  control  his  self-feeling,  and 
thus  to  escape  the  pains  to  which  it  makes  him  liable. 

217 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

To  effect  some  such  escape  has  always  been  a  present 
and  urgent  problem  with  sensitive  minds,  and  the  lit- 
erature of  the  inner  life  is  very  largely  a  record  of 
struggle  with  the  inordinate  passions  of  the  social 
self.  To  the  commoner  and  somewhat  sluggish  sorts 
of  people  these  passions  are,  on  the  whole,  agreeable 
and  beneficent.  Emulation,  ambition,  honor,  even 
pride  and  vanity  in  moderation,  belong  to  the  higher 
and  more  imaginative  parts  of  our  thought;  they 
awaken  us  from  sensuality  and  inspire  us  with  ideal 
and  socially  determined  purposes.  The  doctrine  that 
they  are  evil  could  have  originated  only  with  those 
who  felt  them  so  ;  that  is,  I  take  it,  with  unusually 
sensitive  spirits,  or  those  whom  circumstances  denied 
a  normal  and  wholesome  self-expression.  To  such 
the  thought  of  self  becomes  painful,  not  because  of 
any  lack  of  self -feeling;  but,  quite  the  reverse,  because, 
being  too  sensitive  and  tender,  it  becomes  over- 
wrought, so  that  this  thought  sets  in  vibration  an 
emotional  chord  already  strained  and  in  need  of  rest. 
To  such  minds  self-abnegation  becomes  an  ideal,  an 
ideal  of  rest,  peace  and  freedom,  like  green  pastures 
and  still  waters.  The  prophets  of  the  inner  life,  like 
Marcus  Aurelius,  St.  Paul,  St.  Augustine,  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  and  Pascal,  were  men  distinguished  not  by 
the  lack  of  an  aggressive  self,  but  by  a  success  in  con- 
trolling and  elevating  it  which  makes  them  the  ex- 
amples of  all  who  undergo  a  like  struggle  with  it.  If 
their  ego  had  not  been  naturally  importunate  they 
would  not  have  been  forced  to  contend  with  it,  and  to 

218 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

develop  the  tactics  of  that  contention  for  the  edifica- 
tion of  times  to  come. 

The  social  self  may  be  protected  either  in  the  neg- 
ative way,  by  some  sort  of  withdrawal  from  the  sug- 
gestions that  agitate  and  harass  it,  or  in  the  positive 
way,  by  contending  with  them  and  learning  to  control 
and  transform  them,  so  that  they  are  no  longer  pain- 
ful ;  most  teachers  inculcating  some  sort  of  a  combi- 
nation of  these  two  kinds  of  tactics. 

Physical  withdrawal  from  the  presence  of  men  has 
always  been  much  in  favor  with  those  in  search  of  a 
calmer,  surer  life.  The  passions  to  be  regulated  are 
sympathetic  in  origin,  awakened  by  imagination  of 
the  minds  of  other  persons  with  whom  we  come  in 
contact.  As  Contarini  Fleming  remarks  in  Disraeli's 
novel,  "  So  soon  as  I  was  among  men  I  desired  to  in- 
fluence them."  To  retire  to  the  monastery,  or  the 
woods,  or  the  sea,  is  to  escape  from  the  sharp  sug- 
gestions that  spur  on  ambition ;  and  even  to  change 
from  the  associates  and  competitors  of  our  active  life 
into  the  company  of  strangers,  or  at  least  of  those 
whose  aims  and  ambitions  are  different  from  ours,  has 
much  the  same  effect.  _To  get  away  from  one's  work- 
ing environment  is,  in  a  sense,  to  get  away  from 
one's  self ;  and  this  is  often  the  chief  advantage  of 
travel  and  change.  I  can  hardly  agree  with  those 
who  imagine  that  a  special  instinct  of  withdrawal  is 
necessary  to  explain  the  prominence  of  retirement  in 
the  ordinances  of  religion.  People  wish  to  retire  from 

219 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  world  because  they  are  weary,  harassed,  driven 
by  it,  so  that  they  feel  that  they  cannot  recover  their 
equanimity  without  getting  away  from  it.  To  the  im- 
pressible mind  life  is  a  theatre  of  alarms  and  conten- 
tions, even  when  a  phlegmatic  person  can  see  no 
cause  for  agitation — and  to  such  a  mind  peace  often 
seems  the  one  thing  fair  and  desirable,  so  that  the 
cloister  or  the  forest,  or  the  vessel  on  the  lonesome 
sea,  is  the  most  grateful  object  of  imagination.  The 
imaginative  self,  which  is,  for  most  purposes,  the  real 
self,  may  be  more  battered,  wounded  and  strained  by  a 
striving,  ambitious  life  than  the  material  body  could 
be  in  a  more  visible  battle,  and  its  wounds  are  usually 
more  lasting  and  draw  more  deeply  upon  the  vitality. 
Mortification,  resentment,  jealousy,  the  fear  of  dis- 
grace and  failure,  sometimes  even  hope  and  elation, 
are  exhausting  passions ;  and  it  is  after  a  severe  expe- 
rience of  them  that  retirement  seems  most  healing 
and  desirable. 

A  subtler  kind  of  withdrawal  takes  place  in  the 
imagination  alone  by  curtailing  ambition,  by  trim- 
ming down  one's  idea  of  himself  to  a  measure  that 
need  not  fear  further  diminution.  How  secure  and 
restful  it  would  be  if  one  could  be  consistently  and 
sincerely  humble !  There  is  no  sweeter  feeling  than 
contrition,  self-abnegation,  after  a  course  of  alternate 
conceit  and  mortification.  This  also  is  an  established 
part  of  the  religious  discipline  of  the  mind.  Thus  we 
find  the  following  in  Thomas  :  "  Son,  now  I  will  teach 
thee  the  way  of  peace  and  of  true  liberty  .... 

220 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAEIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

Study  to  do  another's  will  rather  than  thine  own. 
Choose  ever  to  have  less  rather  than  more.  Seek  ever 
the  lower  place  and  to  be  subject  to  all ;  ever  wish 
and  pray  that  the  will  of  God  may  be  perfectly  done 
in  thee  and  in  all.  Behold  such  a  man  enters  the 
bounds  of  peace  and  calm."  *  In  other  words,  lop  off 
the  aggressive  social  self  altogether,  renounce  the 
ordinary  objects  of  ambition,  accustom  yourself  to  an 
humble  place  in  others'  thoughts,  and  you  will  be  at 
peace  ;  because  you  will  have  nothing  to  lose,  nothing 
to  fear.  No  one  at  all  acquainted  with  the  moralists, 
pagan  or  Christian,  will  need  to  be  more  than  re- 
minded that  this  imaginative  withdrawal  of  the  self 
from  strife  and  uncertainty  has  ever  been  inculcated 
as  a  means  to  happiness  and  edification.  Many  per- 
sons who  are  sensitive  to  the  good  opinion  of  others, 
and,  by  impulse,  take  great  pleasure  in  it,  shrink  from 
indulging  this  pleasure  because  they  know  by  experi- 
ence that  it  puts  them  into  others'  power  and  intro- 
duces an  element  of  weakness,  unrest,  and  probable 
mortification.  By  recognizing  a  favorable  opinion  of 
yourself,  and  taking  pleasure  in  it,  you  in  a  measure 
give  yourself  and  your  peace  of  mind  into  the  keeping 
of  another,  of  whose  attitude  you  can  never  be  certain. 
You  have  a  new  source  of  doubt  and  apprehension. 
One  learns  in  time  the  wisdom  of  entering  into  such 
relations  only  with  persons  of  whose  sincerity,  sta- 
bility, and  justice  one  is  as  sure  as  possible ;  and  also 
of  having  nothing  to  do  with  approval  of  himself 
*  De  Imitatione  Christi,  book  iii.,  chap.  23,  par.  1. 
221 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

which  he  does  not  feel  to  have  a  secure  basis  in  his 
character.  And  so  regarding  self-aggrandizement  in 
the  various  forms  implicitly  condemned  by  Thomas's 
four  rules  of  peace  ;  if  a  man  is  of  so  eager  a  tem- 
perament that  he  does  not  need  these  motives  to 
awaken  him  and  call  his  faculties  into  normal  action, 
he  will  be  happier  and  possibly  more  useful  to  the 
world  if  he  is  able  to  subdue  them  by  some  sort  of 
discipline.  In  this  way,  it  seems  to  me,  we  may 
chiefly  account  for  and  justify  the  stringent  self -sup- 
pression of  Pascal  and  of  many  other  fine  spirits. 
"  So  jealous  was  he  of  any  surprise  of  pleasure,  of 
any  thought  of  vanity  or  complacency  in  himself  and 
his  work,  that  he  wore  a  girdle  of  iron  next  his  skin, 
the  sharp  points  of  which  he  pressed  closely  when  he 
thought  himself  in  any  danger.  .  .  ."  * 

Of  course  the  objection  to  withdrawal,  physical 
or  imaginative,  is  that  it  seems  to  be  a  refusal  of  so- 
cial functions,  a  rejection  of  life,  leading  logically  to 
other-worldism,  to  the  idea  that  it  is  better  to  die 
than  to  live.  According  to  this  teaching,  in  its  ex- 
treme form,  the  best  thing  that  can  happen  to  a  man 
is  to  die  and  go  to  heaven  ;  but  if  that  is  not  permit- 
ted, then  let  the  private,  ambitious  self,  set  to  play 
the  tunes  of  this  world,  die  in  him,  and  be  replaced 
by  humble  and  secluded  meditation  in  preparation 
for  the  life  to  come.  When  this  doctrine  was  taught 
and  believed  to  such  an  extent  that  a  great  part  of 
the  finer  spirits  were  led,  during  centuries,  to  isolate 

*  Tulloch's  Pascal,  p.  100. 
222 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAEIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

themselves  in  deserts  and  cloisters,  or  at  least  to 
renounce  and  depreciate  the  affections  and  duties  of 
the  family,  the  effect  was  no  doubt  bad  ;  but  in  our 
time  there  is  little  tendency  to  this  extreme,  and 
there  is  perhaps  danger  that  the  usefulness  of  par- 
tial or  occasional  withdrawal  may  be  overlooked. 
Mr.  Lecky  thinks,  for  instance,  that  the  complete 
suppression  of  the  conventual  system  by  Protestant- 
ism has  been  far  from  a  benefit  to  women  or  the 
world,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  any 
institution  more  needed  than  one  which  should  fur- 
nish a  shelter  for  unprotected  women  and  convert 
them  into  agents  of  charity.*  The  amount  and  kind 
of  social  stimulation  that  a  man  can  bear  without 
harm  to  his  character  and  working  power  depends, 
roughly  speaking,  upon  his  sensitiveness,  which  de- 
termines the  emotional  disturbance,  and  upon  the 
vigor  of  the  controlling  or  co-ordinating  functions, 
which  measures  his  power  to  guide  or  quell  emotion 
and  make  it  subsidiary  to  healthy  life.  There  has 
always  been  a  class  of  persons,  including  a  large 
proportion  of  those  capable  of  the  higher  sorts  of 
intellectual  production,  for  whom  the  competitive 
struggles  of  ordinary  life  are  overstimulating  and 
destructive,  and  who  therefore  cannot  serve  the 
world  well  without  apparently  secluding  themselves 
from  it.  It  would  seem,  then,  that  withdrawal  and 
asceticism  are  often  too  sweepingly  condemned.  A 
sound  practical  morality  will  consider  these  things 
*  See  his  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii.,p.  369. 
223 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

in  relation  to  various  types  of  character  and  circum- 
stance, and  find,  I  believe,  important  functions  for 
both. 

But  the  most  radical  remedy  for  the  mortifications 
and  uncertainties  of  the  social  self  is  not  the  negative 
one  of  merely  secluding  or  diminishing  the  I,  but 
the  positive  one  of  transforming  it.  The  two  are  not 
easily  distinguishable,  and  are  usually  phases  of  the 
same  process.  The  self-instinct,  though  it  cannot  be 
suppressed  while  mental  vigor  remains,  can  be  taught 
to  associate  itself  more  and  more  with  ideas  and 
aims  of  general  and  permanent  worth,  which  can  be 
thought  of  as  higher  than  the  more  sensual,  narrow, 
or  temporary  interests,  and  independent  of  them. 
It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  self  is  any 
idea  or  system  of  ideas  with  which  is  associated  the 
peculiar  appropriative  attitude  we  call  self-feeling. 
Anything  whose  depreciation  makes  me  feel  resent- 
ful is  myself,  whether  it  is  my  coat,  my  face,  my 
brother,  the  book  I  have  published,  the  scientific 
theory  I  accept,  the  philanthropic  work  to  which  I 
am  devoted,  my  religious  creed,  or  my  country.  The 
only  question  is,  Am  I  identified  with  it  in  my 
thought,  so  that  to  touch  it  is  to  touch  me  ?  Thus 
in  "  Middlemarch  "  the  true  self  of  Mr.  Casaubon,  his 
most  aggressive,  persistent,  and  sensitive  part,  is  his 
system  of  ideas  relating  to  the  unpublished  "  Key  to 
All  Mythologies."  It  is  about  this  that  he  is  proud, 
jealous,  sore,  and  apprehensive.  What  he  imagines 

224 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I  " 

that  the  Brasenose  men  will  think  of  it  is  a  large 
part  of  his  social  self,  and  he  suffers  hidden  joy  and 
torture  according  as  he  is  hopeful  or  despondent  of 
its  triumphant  publication.  When  he  finds  that  his 
body  must  die  his  chief  thought  is  how  to  keep  this 
alive,  and  he  attempts  to  impose  its  completion  upon 
poor  Dorothea,  who  is  a  pale  shadow  in  his  life  com- 
pared with  the  Key,  a  mere  instrument  to  minister 
to  this  fantastic  ego.  So  if  one,  turning  the  leaves 
of  history,  could  evoke  the  real  selves  of  all  the  men 
of  thought,  what  a  strange  procession  they  would  be ! 
— outlandish  theories,  unintelligible  and  forgotten 
creeds,  hypotheses  once  despised  but  now  long  es- 
tablished, or  vice  versa — all  conceived  eagerly,  jeal- 
ously, devotedly,  as  the  very  heart  of  the  self.  There 
is  no  class  more  sensitive  and  none,  not  even  the  in- 
sane, in  whom  self-feeling  attaches  to  such  singular 
and  remote  conceptions.  An  astronomer  may  be  in- 
different when  you  depreciate  his  personal  appear- 
ance, abuse  his  relatives,  or  question  his  pecuniary 
honesty;  but  if  you  doubt  that  there  are  artificial 
canals  on  Mars  you  cut  him  to  the  quick.  And  poets 
and  artists  of  every  sort  have  always  and  with  good 
reason  been  regarded  as  a  genus  irritabile. 

The  ideas  of  self  most  commonly  cherished,  and 
the  ambitions  corresponding  to  these  ideas,  fail  to 
appease  the  imagination  of  the  idealist,  for  various 
reasons ;  chiefly,  perhaps,  for  the  following  :  first  be- 
cause they  seem  more  or  less  at  variance  with  the 
good  of  other  persons,  and  so,  to  the  imaginative  and 

225 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sympathetic  mind,  bring  elements  of  inconsistency 
and  wrong,  which  it  cannot  accept  as  consonant  with 
its  own  needs  ;  and  second  because  their  objects  are 
at  best  temporary,  so  that  even  if  thought  of  as 
achieved  they  fail  to  meet  the  need  of  the  mind  for 
a  resting-place  in  some  conception  of  permanent 
good  or  right.  The  transformation  of  narrow  and 
temporary  ambitions  or  ideals  into  something  more 
fitted  to  satisfy  the  imagination  in  these  respects,  is 
an  urgent  need,  a  condition  precedent  to  peace  of 
mind,  in  many  persons.  The  unquiet  and  discord- 
ant state  of  the  unregenerate  is  a  commonplace,  a 
thousand  times  repeated,  of  writings  on  the  inner 
life.  "  Superbus  et  avarus  numquam  quiescunt,"  they 
tell  us,  and  to  enable  us  to  escape  from  such  un- 
rest is  a  chief  aim  of  the  discipline  of  self-feeling 
enjoined  by  ethical  and  religious  teachers.  "  Self," 
"  the  natural  man,"  and  similar  expressions  indicate 
an  aspect  of  the  self  thought  of  as  lower — in  part  at 
least  because  of  the  insecure,  inconsistent,  and  tem- 
porary character  just  indicated — which  is  to  be  so 
far  as  possible  subjected  and  forgotten,  while  the 
feelings  once  attached  to  it  find  a  less  precarious 
object  in  ideas  of  justice  and  right,  or  in  the  concep- 
tion of  a  personal  deity,  in  whom  all  that  is  best  of 
personality  is  to  have  secure  existence  and  eternal 
success. 

In  this  sense  also  we  may  understand  the  idea  of 
freedom  as  it  presented  itself  to  Thomas  a  Kern  pis 
and  similar  minds.  To  forget  "  self  "  and  live  the 

226 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAEIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

larger  life  is  to  be  free ;  free,  that  is,  from  the  rack- 
ing passions  of  the  lower  self,  free  to  go  onward  into 
a  self  that  is  joyful,  boundless,  and  without  remorse. 
To  gain  this  freedom  the  principal  means  is  the  con- 
trol or  mortification  of  sensual  needs  and  worldly 
ambitions. 

Thus  the  passion  of  self-aggrandizement  is  per- 
sistent but  plastic ;  it  will  never  disappear  from 
a  vigorous  mind,  but  may  become  morally  higher  by 
attaching  itself  to  a  larger  conception  of  what  con- 
stitutes the  self. 

Wherever  men  find  themselves  out  of  joint  with 
their  social  environment  the  fact  will  be  reflected  in 
some  peculiarity  of  self -feeling.  Thus  it  was  in  times 
when  the  general  state  of  Europe  was  decadent  and 
hopeless,  or  later  when  ceaseless  wars  and  the  com- 
mon rule  of  violence  prevailed,  that  finer  spirits,  for 
whose  ambition  the  times  offered  no  congenial  career, 
so  largely  sought  refuge  in  religious  seclusion,  and 
there  built  up  among  themselves  a  philosophy  which 
compensated  them  by  the  vision  of  glory  in  another 
world  for  their  insignificance  in  this.  An  institution 
so  popular  and  enduring  as  monasticism  and  the 
system  of  belief  that  throve  in  connection  with  it 
must  have  answered  to  some  deep  need  of  human 
nature,  and  it  would  seem  that,  as  regarded  the  more 
intellectual  class,  this  need  was  largely  that  of  creating 
a  social  self  and  system  of  selves  which  could  thrive 
in  the  actual  state  of  things.  Their  natures  craved 

227 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

success,  and,  following  a  tendency  always  at  work, 
though  never  more  fantastic  in  its  operation,  they 
created  an  ideal  or  standard  of  success  which  they 
could  achieve — very  much  as  a  farmer's  boy  with  a 
weak  body  but  an  active  brain  sometimes  goes  into 
law,  seeking  and  upholding  an  intellectual  type  of 
success.  From  this  point  of  view — which  is,  of  course, 
only  one  of  many  whence  monasticism  may  be  re- 
garded— it  appears  as  a  wonderful  exhibition  of  the 
power  of  human  nature  to  effectuate  itself  in  a  co- 
operative manner  in  spite  of  the  most  untoward 
external  circumstances. 

If  we  have  less  flight  from  the  world,  corporeal  or 
metaphysical,  at  the  present  day,  it  is  doubtless  in 
part  because  the  times  are  more  hospitable  to  the 
finer  abilities,  so  that  all  sorts  of  men,  within  wide 
limits,  find  careers  in  which  they  may  hope  to  gratify 
a  reasonable  ambition.  But  even  now,  where  con- 
ditions are  deranged  and  somewhat  anarchical,  so 
that  many  find  themselves  cut  off  from  the  outlook 
toward  a  congenial  self-development,  the  wine  of  life 
turns  bitter,  and  harrying  resentments  are  generated 
which  more  or  less  disturb  the  stability  of  the  social 
order.  Each  man  must  have  his  "  I " ;  it  is  more 
necessary  to  him  than  bread  ;  and  if  he  does  not  find 
scope  for  it  within  the  existing  institutions  he  will 
be  likely  to  make  trouble. 

Persons  of  great  ambitions,  or  of  peculiar  aims  of 
any  sort,  lie  open  to  disorders  of  self-feeling,  because 
they  necessarily  build  up  in  their  minds  a  self-image 

228 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I " 

which  no  ordinary  social  environment  can  understand 
or  corroborate,  and  which  must  be  maintained  by  hard- 
ening themselves  against  immediate  influences,. en- 
during or  repressing  the  pains  of  present  depreciation, 
and  cultivating  in  imagination  the  approval  of  some 
higher  tribunal.  If  the  man  succeeds  in  becoming 
indifferent  to  the  opinions  of  his  neighbors  he  runs 
into  another  danger,  that  of  a  distorted  and  extrava- 
gant self  of  the  pride  sort,  since  by  the  very  process 
of  gaining  independence  and  immunity  from  the 
stings  of  depreciation  and  misunderstanding,  he  has 
perhaps  lost  that  wholesome  deference  to  some  social 
tribunal  that  a  man  cannot  dispense  with  and  remain 
quite  sane.  The  image  lacks  verification  and  correc- 
tion and  becomes  too  much  the  reflection  of  an  un- 
disciplined self-feeling.  It  would  seem  that  the 
^megalomania  or  delusion  of  greatness  which  Lom- 
broso,  with  more  or  less  plausibility,  ascribes  to 
Victor  Hugo  and  many  other  men  of  genius,  is  to  be 
explained  largely  in  this  way. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  regarding  the  relation 
of  self-feeling  to  mental  disorder,  and  to  abnormal 
personality  of  all  sorts.  It  seems  obvious,  for  in- 
stance, that  the  delusions  of  greatness  and  delusions 
of  persecution  so  common  in  insanity  are  expressions 
of  self-feeling  escaped  from  normal  limitation  and 
control.  The  instinct  which  under  proper  regulation 
by  reason  and  sympathy  gives  rise  to  just  and  sane 
ambition,  in  the  absence  of  it  swells  to  grotesque 
proportions ;  while  the  delusion  of  persecution  ap- 

229 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

pears  to  be  a  like  extravagant  development  of  that 
jealousy  regarding  what  others  are  thinking  of  us 
which  often  reaches  an  almost  insane  point  in  irri- 
table people  whose  sanity  is  not  questioned. 

The  peculiar  relations  to  other  persons  attending 
any  marked  personal  deficiency  or  peculiarity  are 
likely  to  aggravate,  if  not  to  produce,  abnormal 
manifestations  of  self -feeling.  Any  such  trait  suffi- 
ciently noticeable  to  interrupt  easy  and  familiar 
intercourse  with  others,  and  make  people  talk  and 
think  about  a  person  or  to  him  rather  than  loith  him, 
can  hardly  fail  to  have  this  effect.  If  he  is  naturally 
inclined  to  pride  or  irritability,  these  tendencies, 
which  depend  for  correction  upon  the  flow  of  sym- 
pathy, are  likely  to  be  increased.  One  who  shows 
signs  of  mental  aberration  is,  inevitably  perhaps,  but 
cruelly,  shut  off  from  familiar,  thoughtless  intercourse, 
partly  excommunicated ;  his  isolation  is  unwittingly 
proclaimed  to  him  on  every  countenance  by  curi- 
osity, indifference,  aversion  or  pity,  and  in  so  far  as 
he  is  human  enough  to  need  free  and  equal  com- 
munication and  feel  the  lack  of  it,  he  suffers  pain 
and  loss  of  a  kind  and  degree  which  others  can  only 
faintly  imagine,  and  for  the  most  part  ignore.  He 
finds  himself  apart,  "not  in  it,"  and  feels  chilled, 
fearful,  and  suspicious.  Thus  "queerness"  is  no 
sooner  perceived  than  it  is  multiplied  by  reflection 
from  other  minds.  The  same  is  true  in  some  degree 
of  dwarfs,  deformed  or  disfigured  persons,  even  the 
deaf  and  those  suffering  from  the  infirmities  of  old 

230 


THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VAKIOUS  PHASES  OF  "  I » 

age.  The  chief  misery  of  the  decline  of  the  faculties, 
and  a  main  cause  of  the  irritability  that  often  goes 
with  it,  is  evidently  the  isolation,  the  lack  of  custom- 
ary appreciation  and  influence,  which  only  the  rarest 
tact  and  thoughtfulness  on  the  part  of  others  can 
alleviate. 


231 


CHAPTEE  YII 

HOSTILITY 

SIMPLE  OR  ANIMAL  ANGER — SOCIAL  ANGER — THE  FUNCTION  OF 
HOSTILITY — THE  DOCTRINE  OF  NON-RESISTANCE — CONTROL  AND 
TRANSFORMATION  OF  HOSTILITY  BY  REASON — HOSTILITY  AS 
PLEASURE  OR  PAIN — THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  ACCEPTED  SOCIAL 
STANDARDS — FEAR. 

ANGER,  like  other  emotions,  seems  to  exist  at  birth 
as  a  simple,  instinctive  animal  tendency,  and  to  un- 
dergo differentiation  and  development  parallel  with 
the  growth  of  imagination.  Perez,  speaking  of  chil- 
dren at  about  the  age  of  two  months,  says,  "they 
begin  to  push  away  objects  that  they  do  not  like,  and 
have  real  fits  of  passion,  frowning,  growing  red  in  the 
face,  trembling  all  over,  and  sometimes  shedding 
tears."  They  also  show  anger  at  not  getting  the 
breast  or  bottle,  or  when  washed  or  undressed,  or 
when  their  toys  are  taken  away.  At  about  one  year  old 
"they  will  beat  people,  animals,  and  inanimate  ob- 
jects if  they  are  angry  with  them,"  *  throw  things  at 
offending  persons,  and  the  like. 

I  have  observed  phenomena  similar  to  these,  aad 

no  doubt  all  have  who  have  seen  anything  of  little 

children.      If   there   are  any  writers   who  tend   to 

regard  the  mind  at  birth  as  almost  tabula  rasa  so  far 

*  Perez,  The  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  66. 

232 


HOSTILITY 

as  special  instincts  are  concerned,  consisting  of  little 
more  than  a  faculty  of  receiving  and  organizing 
impressions,  it  must  be  wholesome  for  them  to  asso- 
ciate with  infants  and  notice  how  unmistakable  are 
the  signs  of  a  distinct  and  often  violent  emotion, 
apparently  identical  with  the  anger  or  rage  of  adults. 
What  grown-up  persons  feel  seems  to  be  different,  not 
in  its  emotional  essence,  but  in  being  modified  by  asso- 
ciation with  a  much  more  complicated  system  of  ideas. 
This  simple,  animal  sort  of  anger,  excited  immedi- 
ately by  something  obnoxious  to  the  senses,  does  not 
entirely  disappear  in  adult  life.  Probably  most  per- 
sons who  step  upon  a  barrel-hoop  or  run  their  heads 
against  a  low  doorway  can  discern  a  moment  of. 
instinctive  anger  toward  the  harming  object.  Even 
our  more  enduring  forms  of  hostility  seem  often  to 
partake  of  this  direct,  unintellectual  character.  Most 
people,  but  especially  those  of  a  sensitive,  impressi- 
ble nature,  have  antipathies  to  places,  animals,  per- 
sons, words — to  all  sorts  of  things  in  fact — which 
appear  to  spring  directly  out  of  the  subconscious 
life,  without  any  mediation  of  thought.  Some  think 
that  an  animal  or  instinctive  antipathy  to  human 
beings  of  a  different  race  is  natural  to  all  mankind. 
And  among  people  of  the  same  race  there  are  un- 
doubtedly persons  whom  other  persons  loathe  with- 
out attributing  to  them  any  hostile  state  of  mind,  but 
with  a  merely  animal  repugnance.  Even  when  the 
object  of  hostility  is  quite  distinctly  a  mental  or 
moral  trait,  we  often  seem  to  feel  it  in  an  external 

233 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

way,  that  is,  we  see  it  as  behavior  but  do  not  really 
understand  it  as  thought  or  sentiment.  Thus  duplic- 
ity is  hateful  whether  we  can  see  any  motive  for  it 
or  not,  and  gives  a  sense  of  slipperiness  and  in- 
security so  tangible  that  one  naturally  thinks  of  some 
wriggling  animal.  In  like  manner  vacillation,  fawn- 
ing, excessive  protestation  or  self-depreciation,  and 
many  other  traits,  may  be  obnoxious  to  us  in  a  some- 
what physical  way  without  our  imagining  them  as 
states  of  mind. 

But  for  a  social,  imaginative  being,  whose  main 
interests  are  in  the  region  of  communicative  thought 
and  sentiment,  the  chief  field  of  anger,  as  of  other 
emotions,  is  transferred  to  this  region.  Hostility 
ceases  to  be  a  simple  emotion  due  to  a  simple  stimu- 
lus, and  breaks  up  into  innumerable  hostile  sentiments 
associated  with  highly  imaginative  personal  ideas. 
In  this  mentally  higher  form  it  may  be  regarded  as 
hostile  sympathy,  or  a  hostile  comment  on  sympathy. 
That  is  to  say,  we  enter  by  sympathy  or  personal 
imagination  into  the  state  of  mind  of  others,  or  think 
we  do,  and  if  the  thoughts  we  find  there  are  injurious 
to  or  uncongenial  with  the  ideas  we  are  already 
cherishing,  we  feel  a  movement  of  anger. 

This  is  forcibly  expressed  in  a  brief  but  admirable 
study  of  antipathy  by  Sophie  Bryant.  Though  the 
antipathy  she  describes  is  of  a  peculiarly  subtle  kind, 
it  is  plain  that  the  same  sort  of  analysis  may  be 
applied  to  any  form  of  imaginative  hostility. 

234 


HOSTILITY 

"  A  is  drawn  out  toward  B  to  feel  what  he  feels. 
If  the  new  feeling  harmonizes,  distinctly  or  obscurely, 
with  the  whole  system  of  A's  consciousness — or  the 
part  then  identified  with  his  will — there  follows  that 
joyful  expansion  of  self  beyond  self  which  is  sym- 
pathy. But  if  not — if  the  new  feeling  is  out  of  keep- 
ing with  the  system  of  A's  will — tends  to  upset  the 
system,  and  brings  discord  into  it — there  follows  the 
reaction  of  the  whole  against  the  hostile  part  which, 
transferred  to  its  cause  in  B,  pushes  out  B's  state,  as 
the  antithesis  of  self,  yet  threatening  self,  and  offen- 
sive." Antipathy,  she  says,  "  is  full  of  horrid  thrill." 
"  The  peculiar  horror  of  the  antipathy  springs  from 
the  unwilling  response  to  the  state  abhorred.  We 
feel  ourselves  actually  like  the  other  person,  selfishly 
vain,  cruelly  masterful,  artfully  affected,  insincere, 
ungenial,  and  so  on."  ..."  There  is  some  af- 
finity between  those  who  antipathize."  *  And  with 
similar  meaning  Thoreau  remarks  that  "  you  cannot 
receive  a  shock  unless  you  have  an  electric  affinity 
for  that  which  shocks  you,"  and  that  "  He  who  re- 
ceives an  injury  is  to  some  extent  an  accomplice  of 
the  wrong-doer."  f 

Thus  the  cause  of  hostility  is  imaginative  or  sym- 
pathetic, an  inimical  idea  attributed  to  another  mind. 
We  cannot  feel  this  way  toward  that  which  is  totally 
unlike  us,  because  the  totally  unlike  is  unimagin- 
able, has  no  interest  for  us.  This,  like  all  social 

*  Mind,  new  series,  vol.  iv.,  p.  365. 

f  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Hirers,  pp.  303,  328. 

235 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

feeling,   requires   a   union   of   likeness   with   differ- 
ence. 

It  is  clear  that  closer  association,  and  more  knowl- 
edge of  one  another,  offer  no  security  against  hos- 
tile feeling.  Whether  intimacy  will  improve  our  sen- 
timent toward  another  man  or  not  depends  upon 
the  true  relation  of  his  way  of  thinking  and  feeling 
to  ours,  which  intimacy  is  likely  to  reveal.  There 
are  many  persons  with  whom  we  get  on  very  well  at 
a  certain  distance,  who  would  turn  out  intensely  an- 
tipathetic if  we  had  to  live  in  the  same  house  with 
them.  Probably  all  of  us  have  experienced  in  one 
form  or  another  the  disgust  and  irritation  that  may 
come  from  enforced  intimacy  with  people  we  liked 
well  enough  as  mere  acquaintances,  and  with  whom 
we  can  find  no  particular  fault,  except  that  they 
rub  us  the  wrong  way.  Henry  James,  speaking  of 
the  aversion  of  the  brothers  Goncourt  for  Saint 
Beuve,  remarks  that  it  was  "  a  plant  watered  by  fre- 
quent intercourse  and  protected  by  punctual  notes."  * 
It  is  true  that  an  active  sense  of  justice  may  do 
much  to  overcome  unreasonable  antipathies;  but 
there  are  so  many  urgent  uses  for  our  sense  of  justice 
that  it  is  well  not  to  fatigue  it  by  excessive  and 
unnecessary  activity.  Justice  involves  a  strenuous 
and  symmetrical  exercise  of  the  imagination  and  rea- 
son, which  no  one  can  keep  up  all  the  time;  and 
those  who  display  it  most  on  important  occasions 
ought  to  be  free  to  indulge  somewhat  their  whims 
and  prejudices  in  familiar  intercourse. 

*  See  his  essay  on  the  Journal  of  the  Brothers  Goncourt. 


HOSTILITY 

Neither  do  refinement,  culture,  and  taste  have  any 
necessary  tendency  to  diminish  hostility.  They  make 
a  richer  and  finer  sympathy  possible,  but  at  the  same 
time  multiply  the  possible  occasions  of  antipathy. 
They  are  like  a  delicate  sense  of  smell,  which  opens 
the  way  to  as  much  disgust  as  appreciation.  In- 
stead of  the  most  sensitive  sympathy,  the  finest  men- 
tal texture,  being  a  safeguard  against  hostile  pas- 
sions, it  is  only  too  evident  from  a  study  of  the  lives 
of  men  of  genius  that  these  very  traits  make  a  sane 
and  equable  existence  peculiarly  difficult.  Bead,  for 
instance,  the  confessions  of  Rousseau,  and  observe 
how  a  fine  nature,  full  of  genuine  and  eager  social 
idealism,  is  subject  to  peculiar  sufferings  and  errors 
through  the  sensibility  and  imagination  such  a  nature 
must  possess.  The  quicker  the  sympathy  and  ideal- 
ity, the  greater  the  suffering  from  neglect  and  failure, 
the  greater  also  the  difficulty  of  disciplining  the  mul- 
titude of  intense  impressions  and  maintaining  a  sane 
view  of  the  whole.  Hence  the  pessimism,  the  ex- 
travagant indignation  against  real  or  supposed  wrong- 
doers, and  not  infrequently,  as  in  Rousseau's  case, 
the  almost  insane  bitterness  of  jealousy  and  mistrust. 

The  commonest  forms  of  imaginative  hostility  are 
grounded  011  social  self -feeling,  and  come  under  the 
Lead  of  resentment.  We  impute  to  the  other  per- 
son an  injurious  thought  regarding  something  which 
we  cherish  as  a  part  of  our  self,  and  this  awakens 
anger,  which  we  name  pique,  animosity,  umbrage, 
estrangement,  soreness,  bitterness,  heart-burning, 

237 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

jealousy,  indignation,  and  so  on ;  in  accordance  with 
variations  which  these  words  suggest.  They  all  rest 
upon  a  feeling  that  the  other  person  harbors  ideas 
injurious  to  us,  so  that  the  thought  of  him  is  an  at- 
tack upon  our  self.  Suppose,  for  instance,  there  is 
a  person  who  has  reason  to  believe  that  he  has  caught 
me  in  a  lie.  It  makes  little  difference,  perhaps, 
whether  he  really  has  or  not ;  so  long  as  I  have  any 
self-respect  left,  and  believe  that  he  entertains  this 
depreciatory  idea  of  me,  I  must  resent  this  idea  when- 
ever, through  my  thinking  of  him,  it  enters  my  mind. 
Or  suppose  there  is  a  man  who  has  met  me  running 
in  panic  from  the  field  of  battle ;  would  it  not  be 
hard  not  to  hate  him  ?  These  situations  are  perhaps 
unusual,  but  we  all  know  persons  to  whom  we  attrib- 
ute depreciation  of  our  characters,  our  friends,  our 
children,  our  workmanship,  our  cherished  creed  or 
philanthropy;  and  we  do  not  like  them. 

The  resentment  of  charity  or  pity  is  a  good  in- 
stance of  hostile  sympathy.  If  a  man  has  self-re- 
spect, he  feels  insulted  by  the  depreciating  view  of 
his  manhood  implied  in  commiserating  him  or  offer- 
ing him  alms.  Self-respect  means  that  one's  reflected 
self  is  up  to  the  social  standard :  and  the  social  stand- 
ard requires  that  a  man  should  not  need  pity  or  alms 
except  under  very  unusual  conditions.  So  the  as- 
sumption that  he  does  need  them  is  an  injury — wheth- 
er he  does  or  not — precisely  as  it  is  an  insult  to  a 
woman  to  commiserate  her  ugliness  and  bad  taste, 
and  suggest  that  she  wear  a  veil  or  employ  someone 

238 


HOSTILITY 

to  select  her  gowns.  The  curious  may  find  interest 
in  questions  like  this :  whether  a  tramp  can  have  self- 
respect  unless  he  deceives  the  one  who  gives  him  aid, 
and  so  feels  superior  to  him,  and  not  a  mere  depend- 
ent. In  the  same  way  we  can  easily  see  why  crimi- 
nals look  down  upon  paupers. 

The  word  indignation  suggests  a  higher  sort  of 
imaginative  hostility.  It  implies  that  the  feeling  is 
directed  toward  some  attack  upon  a  standard  of  right, 
and  is  not  merely  an  impulse  like  jealousy  or  pique. 
A  higher  degree  of  rationalization  is  involved ;  there 
is  some  notion  of  a  reasonable  adjustment  of  personal 
claims,  which  the  act  or  thought  in  question  violates. 
We  frequently  perceive  that  the  simpler  forms  of 
resentment  have  no  rational  basis,  could  not  be  justi- 
fied in  open  court,  but  indignation  always  claims  a 
general  or  social  foundation.  We  feel  indignant  when 
we  think  that  favoritism  and  not  merit  secures  pro- 
motion, when  the  rich  man  gets  a  pass  on  the  rail- 
road, and  so  on. 

It  is  thus  possible  rudely  to  classify  hostilities 
under  three  heads,  according  to  the  degree  of  mental 
organization  they  involve ;  namely,  as 

1.  Primary,  immediate,  or  animal. 

2.  Social,  sympathetic,  imaginative,  or  personal,  of 
a  comparatively  direct  sort,  that  is,  without  reference 
to  any  standard  of  justice. 

3.  Rational  or  ethical ;  similar  to  the  last  but  in- 
volving reference  to  a  standard  of  justice  and  the 
sanction  of  conscience. 

239 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  function  of  hostility  is,  no  doubt,  to  awaken  a 
fighting  energy,  to  contribute  an  emotional  motive 
force  to  activities  of  self-preservation  or  aggrandize- 
ment. 

In  its  immediate  or  animal  form  this  is  obvious 
enough.  The  wave  of  passion  that  possesses  a  fight- 
ing dog  stimulates  and  concentrates  his  energy  upon 
a  few  moments  of  struggle  in  which  success  or  failure 
may  be  life  or  death  ;  and  the  simple,  violent  anger 
of  children  and  impulsive  adults  is  evidently  much 
the  same  thing.  Yital  force  explodes  in  a  flash  of 
aggression ;  the  mind  has  no  room  for  anything  but 
the  fierce  instinct.  It  is  clear  that  hostility  of  this 
uncontrolled  sort  is  proper  to  a  very  simple  state  of 
society  and  of  warfare,  and  is  likely  to  be  a  source  of 
disturbance  and  weakness  in  that  organized  state 
which  calls  for  corresponding  organization  in  the 
individual  mind. 

There  is  a  transition  by  imperceptible  degrees 
from  the  blind  anger  that  thinks  of  nothing  to  the 
imaginative  anger  that  thinks  of  persons,  and  pursues 
the  personal  idea  into  all  possible  degrees  of  subtlety 
and  variety.  The  passion  itself, .  the  way  we  feel 
when  we  are  angry,  does  not  seem  to  change  much, 
except,  perhaps,  in  intensity,  the  change  being  mostly 
in  the  idea  that  awakens  it.  It  is  as  if  anger  were  a 
strong  and  peculiar  flavor  which  might  be  taken  with 
the  simplest  food  or  the  most  elaborate,  might  be 
used  alone,  strong  and  plain,  or  in  the  most  curious 
and  recondite  combinations  with  other  flavors. 

240 


HOSTILITY 

While  it  is  evident  enough  that  animal  anger  is  one 
of  those  instincts  that  are  readily  explained  as  con- 
ducive to  self-preservation,  it  is  not,  perhaps,  so 
obvious  that  socialized  anger  has  any  such  justifica- 
tion. I  think,  however,  that,  though  very  liable  to 
be  excessive  and  unmanageable,  and  tending  con- 
tinually to  be  economized  as  the  race  progresses, 
so  that  most  forms  of  it  are  properly  regarded  as 
wrong,  it  nevertheless  plays  an  indispensable  part 
in  life. 

The  mass  of  mankind  are  sluggish  and  need  some 
resentment  as  a  stimulant ;  this  is  its  function  on  the 
higher  plane  of  life  as  it  is  on  the  lower.  Surround 
a  man  with  soothing,  flattering  circumstances,  and  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten  he  will  fail  to  do  anything 
worthy,  but  will  lapse  into  some  form  of  sensualism 
or  dilettanteism.  There  is  no  tonic,  to  a  nature  sub- 
stantial enough  to  bear  it,  like  chagrin — "  erquickender 
Verdruss,"  as  Goethe  says.  Life  without  opposition 
is  Capua.  No  matter  what  the  part  one  is  fitted  to 
play  in  it,  he  can  make  progress  in  his  path  only 
by  a  vigorous  assault  upon  the  obstacles,  and  to  be 
vigorous  the  assault  must  be  supported  by  passion 
of  some  sort.  With  most  of  us  the  requisite  intensity 
of  passion  is  not  forthcoming  without  an  element  of 
resentment ;  and  common-sense  and  careful  observa- 
tion will,  I  believe,  confirm  the  opinion  that  few  peo- 
ple who  amount  to  much  are  without  a  good  capacity 
for  hostile  feeling,  upon  which  they  draw  freely  when 
they  need  it.  This  would  be  more  readily  admitted 

241 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

if  many  people  were  not  without  the  habit  of  pene- 
trating observation,  either  of  themselves  or  others,  in 
such  matters,  and  so  are  enabled  to  believe  that 
anger,  which  is  conventionally  held  to  be  wrong,  has 
no  place  in  the  motives  of  moral  persons. 

I  have  in  mind  a  man  who  is  remarkable  for  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  aggressive,  tenacious  and  successful  pur- 
suit of  the  right.  He  does  the  things  that  everyone 
else  agrees  ought  to  be  done  but  does  not  do — 
especially  things  involving  personal  antagonism. 
While  the  other  people  deplore  the  corruption  of 
politics,  but  have  no  stomach  to  amend  it,  he  is  the 
man  to  beard  the  corrupt  official  in  his  ward,  or 
expose  him  in  the  courts  or  the  public  press — all  at 
much  pains  and  cost  to  himself  and  without  prospect 
of  honor  or  any  other  recompense.  If  one  considers 
how  he  differs  from  other  conscientious  people  of 
equal  ability  and  opportunity,  it  appears  to  be  largely 
in  having  more  bile  in  him.  He  has  a  natural  fund 
of  animosity,  and  instead  of  spending  it  blindly  and 
harmfully,  he  directs  it  upon  that  which  is  hateful  to 
the  general  good,  thus  gratifying  his  native  turn  for 
resentment  in  a  moral  and  fruitful  way.  Evidently 
if  there  were  more  men  of  this  stamp  it  would  be 
of  benefit  to  the  moral  condition  of  the  country. 
Contemporary  conditions  seem  to  tend  somewhat  to 
dissipate  that  righteous  wrath  against  evil  whicl}, 
intelligently  directed,  is  a  main  instrument  of  prog- 
ress. 

Thomas  Huxley,  to  take  a  name  known  to  all,  was 
242 


HOSTILITY 

a  man  in  whom  there  was  much  fruitful  hostility. 
He  did  not  seek  controversy,  but  when  the  enemies 
of  truth  offered  battle  he  felt  no  inclination  to  refuse ; 
and  he  avowed — perhaps  with  a  certain  zest  in  con- 
travening conventional  teaching — that  he  loved  his 
friends  and  hated  his  enemies.*  His  hatred  was  of 
a  noble  sort,  and  the  reader  of  his  Life  and  Letters 
can  hardly  doubt  that  he  was  a  good  as  well  as  a 
great  man,  or  that  his  pugnacity  helped  him  to  be 
such.  Indeed  I  do  not  think  that  science  or  letters 
could  do  without  the  spirit  of  opposition,  although 
much  energy  is  dissipated  and  much  thought  clouded 
by  it.  Even  men  like  Darwin  or  Emerson,  who 
seem  to  wish  nothing  more  than  to  live  at  peace  with 
everyone,  may  be  observed  to  develop  their  views 
with  unusual  fulness  and  vigor  where  they  are  most 
in  opposition  to  authority.  There  is  something  anal- 
ogous to  political  parties  in  all  intellectual  activity  ; 
opinion  divides,  more  or  less  definitely,  into  oppos- 
ing groups,  and  each  side  is  stimulated  by  the  oppo- 
sition of  the  other  to  define,  corroborate,  and  amend 
its  views,  with  the  purpose  of  justifying  itself  before 
the  constituency  to  which  it  appeals.  What  we  need 
is  not  that  controversy  should  disappear,  but  that  it 
should  be  carried  on  with  sincere  and  absolute  defer- 
ence to  the  standard  of  truth. 

A  just  resentment  is  not  only  a  needful  stimulus 

to  aggressive  righteousness,  but  has  also  a  wholesome 

effect  upon  the  mind  of  the  person  against  whom  it  is 

*  See  his  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  ii.,  p.  192. 

243 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

directed,  by  awakening  a  feeling  of  the  importance  of 
the  sentiments  he  has  trangressed.  On  the  higher 
planes  of  life  an  imaginative  sense  that  there  is  re- 
sentment in  the  minds  of  other  persons  performs  the 
same  function  that  physical  resistance  does  upon  the 
lower.*  It  is  an  attack  upon  my  mental  self,  and  as 
a  sympathetic  and  imaginative  being  I  feel  it  more 
than  I  would  a  mere  blow ;  it  forces  me  to  consider 
the  other's  view,  and  either  to  accept  it  or  to  bear  it 
down  by  the  stronger  claims  of  a  different  one.  Thus 
it  enters  potently  into  our  moral  judgments. 

"  Let  such  pure  hate  still  underprop 
Our  love  that  we  may  be 
Each  other's  conscience."  t 

I  think  that  no  one's  character  and  aims  can  be 
respected  unless  he  is  perceived  to  be  capable  of 
some  sort  of  resentment.  We  feel  that  if  he  is  really 
in  earnest  about  anything  he  should  feel  hostile 
emotion  if  it  is  attacked,  and  if  he  gives  no  sign  of 
this,  either  at  the  moment  of  attack  or  later,  he  and 
what  he  represents  become  despised.  No  teacher, 
for  instance,  can  maintain  discipline  unless  his 
scholars  feel  that  he  will  in  some  manner  resent  a 
breach  of  it. 

Thus  we  seldom  feel  keenly  that  our  acts  are 
wrong  until  we  perceive  that  they  arouse  some  sort 

*  Compare  Professor  Simon  N.  Patten's  Theory  of  Social  Forces, 
p.  135. 

fThoreau,  A  Week,  etc.,  p.  304. 
244 


HOSTILITY 

of  resentment  in  others,  and  whatever  selfish  aggres- 
sion we  can  practise  without  arousing  resistance,  we 
presently  come  to  look  upon  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Judging  the  matter  from  my  own  consciousness  and 
experience,  I  have  no  belief  in  the  theory  that  non- 
resistance  has,  as  a  rule,  a  mollifying  influence  upon 
the  aggressor.  I  do  not  wish  people  to  turn  me  the 
other  cheek  when  I  smite  them,  because,  in  most 
cases,  that  has  a  bad  effect  upon  me.  I  am  soon 
used  to  submission  and  may  come  to  think  no  more 
of  the  unresisting  sufferer  than  I  do  of  the  sheep 
whose  flesh  I  eat  at  dinner.  Neither,  on  the  other 
hand,  am  I  helped  by  extravagant  and  accusatory 
opposition ;  that  is  likely  to  put  me  into  a  state  of 
unreasoning  anger.  But  it  is  good  for  us  that  every- 
one should  maintain  his  rights,  and  the  rights  of 
others  with  whom  he  sympathizes,  exhibiting  a  just 
and  firm  resentment  against  any  attempt  to  tread 
upon  them.  A  consciousness,  based  on  experience, 
that  the  transgression  of  moral  standards  will  arouse 
resentment  in  the  minds  of  those  whose  opinion  we 
respect,  is  a  main  force  in  the  upholding  of  such 
standards. 

But  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  like  all  ideas 
that  have  appealed  to  good  minds,  has  a  truth 
wrapped  up  in  it,  notwithstanding  what  appears  to 
be  its  flagrant  absurdity.  What  the  doctrine  really 
means,  as  taught  in  the  New  Testament  and  by  many 
individuals  and  societies  in  our  own  day,  is  perhaps 
no  more  than  this,  that  we  should  discard  the  coarser 

245 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDEK 

weapons  of  resistance  for  the  finer,  and  threaten  a 
moral  resentment  instead  of  blows  or  lawsuits.  It 
is  quite  true  that  we  can  best  combat  what  we  regard 
as  evil  in  another  person  of  ordinary  sensibility  by 
attacking  the  higher  phases  of  his  self  rather  than  the 
lower.  If  a  man  appears  to  be  about  to  do  something 
brutal  or  dishonest,  we  may  either  encounter  him  on 
his  present  low  plane  of  life  by  knocking  him  down 
or  calling  a  policeman,  or  we  may  try  to  work  upon 
his  higher  consciousness  by  giving  him  to  under- 
stand that  we  feel  sure  a  person  of  his  self-respect 
and  good  repute  will  not  degrade  himself,  but  that  if 
anything  so  improbable  and  untoward  should  occur, 
he  must,  of  course,  expect  the  disappointment  and 
contempt  of  those  who  before  thought  well  of  him. 
In  other  words,  we  threaten,  as  courteously  as  pos- 
sible, his  social  self.  This  method  is  often  much 
more  efficient  than  the  other,  is  morally  edifying  in- 
stead of  degrading,  and  is  practised  by  men  of  ad- 
dress who  make  no  claim  to  unusual  virtue. 

This  seems  to  be  what  is  meant  by  non-resistance ; 
but  the  name  is  misleading.  It  is  resistance,  and  di- 
rected at  what  is  believed  to  be  the  enemy's  weakest 
point.  As  a  matter  of  strategy  it  is  an  attack  upon 
his  flank,  aggression  upon  an  unprotected  part  of  his 
position.  Its  justification,  in  the  long  run,  is  in  its 
success.  If  we  do  not  succeed  in  making  our  way 
into  the  other  man's  mind  and  changing  his  point 
of  view  by  substituting  our  own,  the  Avhole  manoeuvre 
falls  flat,  the  injury  is  done,  the  ill  doer  is  confirmed 

246 


HOSTILITY 

in  his  courses,  and  you  would  better  have  knocked 
him  down.  It  is  good  to  appeal  to  the  highest 
motives  we  can  arouse,  and  to  exercise  a  good  deal 
of  faith  as  to  what  can  be  aroused,  but  real  non- 
resistance  to  what  we  believe  to  be  wrong  is  mere 
pusillanimity.  There  is  perhaps  no  important  sect 
or  teacher  that  roally  inculcates  such  a  doctrine, 
the  name  non-resistance  being  given  to  attacks 
upon  the  higher  self  under  the  somewhat  crude 
impression  that  resistance  is  not  such  unless  it 
takes  some  obvious  material  form,  and  probably  all 
teachers  would  be  found  to  vary  their  tactics  some- 
what according  to  the  sort  of  people  with  whom  they 
are  dealing.  Although  Christ  taught  the  turning  of 
the  other  cheek  to  the  smiter,  and  that  the  coat 
should  follow  the  cloak,  it  does  not  appear  that  he 
suggested  to  those  who  were  desecrating  the  Temple 
that  they  should  double  their  transactions,  but,  ap- 
parently regarding  them  as  beyond  the  reach  of  moral 
suasion,  he  "  went  into  the  Temple,  and  began  to  cast 
out  them  that  sold  and  bought  in  the  Temple,  and 
overthrew  the  tables  of  the  money-changers  and  the 
seats  of  them  that  sold  doves."  It  seems  that  he 
even  used  a  scourge  on  this  occasion.  I  cannot  see 
much  in  the  question  regarding  non-resistance  beyond 
a  vague  use  of  terms  and  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
what  kind  of  resistance  is  most  effective  in  certain 
cases. 

It  is  easy  and  not  uncommon  to  state  too  exclu- 
sively the  pre-eminence  of  affection  in  human  ideals. 

247 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

No  one,  I  suppose,  believes  that  the  life  of  Fra  An- 
gelico's  angels,  such  as  we  see  them  in  his  "  Last 
Judgment,"  circling  on  the  flowery  sward  of  Paradise, 
would  long  content  any  normal  human  creature.  If 
it  appears  beautiful  and  desirable  at  times,  this  is 
perhaps  because  our  world  is  one  in  which  the  supply 
of  amity  and  peace  mostly  falls  short  of  the  demand 
for  them.  Many  of  us  have  seen  times  of  heat  and 
thirst  when  it  seemed  as  if  a  bit  of  shade  and  a 
draught  of  cold  water  would  appease  all  earthly  wants. 
But  when  we  had  the  shade  and  the  water  we  pres- 
ently began  to  think  about  something  else.  So  with 
these  ideals  of  unbroken  peace  and  affection.  Even  for 
those  sensitive  spirits  that  most  cherish  them,  they 
would  hardly  suffice  as  a  continuity.  An  indiscrimi- 
nate and  unvarying  amity  is,  after  all,  disgusting. 

Human  ideals  and  human  nature  must  develop 
together,  and  we  cannot  foresee  what  either  may 
become ;  but  for  the  present  it  would  seem  that  an 
honest  and  reasonable  idealism  must  look  rather 
to  the  organization  and  control  of  all  passions  with 
reference  to  some  conception  of  right,  than  to  the  ex- 
pulsion of  some  passions  by  others.  I  doubt  whether 
any  healthy  and  productive  love  can  exist  which  is 
not  resentment  on  its  obverse  side.  How  can  we 
rightly  care  for  anything  without  in  some  way  resent- 
ing attacks  upon  it  ? 

Apparently,  the  higher  function  of  hostility  is  to 
put  down  wrong ;  and  to  fulfil  this  function  it  must 

248 


HOSTILITY 

be  rationally  controlled  with  a  view  to  ideals  of 
justice.  In  so  far  as  a  man  has  a  sound  and  active 
social  imagination,  he  will  feel  the  need  of  this  con- 
trol, and  will  tend  with  more  or  less  energy,  accord- 
ing to  the  vigor  of  his  mind,  to  limit  his  resentment 
to  that  which  his  judgment  tells  him  is  really  unjust 
or  wrong.  Imagination  presents  us  with  all  sorts 
of  conflicting  views,  which  reason,  whose  essence  is 
organization,  tries  to  arrange  and  control  in  accord- 
ance with  some  unifying  principle,  some  standard 
of  equity  :  moral  principles  result  from  the  mind's 
instinctive  need  to  achieve  unity  of  view.  All  special 
impulses,  and  hostile  feeling  among  them,  are  brought 
to  the  bar  of  conscience  and  judged  by  such  stand- 
ards as  the  mind  has  worked  out.  If  declared  right 
or  justifiable,  resentment  is  endorsed  and  enforced 
by  the  will ;  we  think  of  it  as  righteous  and  perhaps 
take  credit  with  ourselves  for  it.  But  if  it  appears 
grounded  on  no  broad  and  unifying  principle,  our 
larger  thought  disowns  it,  and  tends  with  such  energy 
as  it  may  have  to  ignore  and  suppress  it.  Thus  we 
overlook  accidental  injury,  we  control  or  avoid  mere 
antipathy,  but  we  act  upon  indignation.  The  latter 
is  enduring  and  powerful  because  consistent  with 
cool  thought ;  while  impulsive,  unreasoning  anger, 
getting  no  re-enforcement  from  such  thought,  has 
little  lasting  force. 

Suppose,  for  illustration,  one  goes  with  a  request 
to  some  person  in  authority,  and  meets  a  curt  refusal. 
The  first  feeling  is  doubtless  one  of  blind,  unthinking 

249 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

anger  at  the  rebuff.  Immediately  after  that  the 
mind  busies  itself  more  deeply  with  the  matter, 
imagining  motives,  ascribing  feelings  and  the  like ; 
and  anger  takes  a  more  bitter  and  personal  form,  it 
rankles  where  at  first  it  only  stung.  But  if  one  is  a 
fairly  reasonable  man,  accustomed  to  refer  things  to 
standards  of  right,  one  presently  grows  calmer  and, 
continuing  the  imaginative  process  in  a  broader  way, 
endeavors  to  put  himself  at  the  other  person's 
point  of  view  and  see  what  justification,  if  any,  there 
is  for  the  latter's  conduct.  Possibly  he  is  one  subject 
to  constant  solicitation,  with  whom  coldness  and 
abruptness  are  necessary  to  the  despatch  of  business 
— and  so  on.  If  the  explanation  seems  insufficient, 
so  that  his  rudeness  still  appears  to  be  mere  insolence, 
our  resentment  against  him  lasts,  reappearing  when- 
ever we  think  of  him,  so  that  we  are  likely  to  thwart 
him  somehow  if  we  get  a  chance,  and  justify  our 
action  to  ourselves  and  others  on  grounds  of  moral 
disapproval. 

Or  suppose  one  has  to  stand  in  line  at  the  post- 
office,  with  a  crowd  of  other  people,  waiting  to  get  his 
mail.  There  are  delay  and  discomfort  to  be  borne ; 
but  these  he  will  take  with  composure  because  he  sees 
that  they  are  a  part  of  the  necessary  conditions  of  the 
situation,  which  all  must  submit  to  alike.  Suppose, 
however,  that  while  patiently  waiting  his  turn  he 
notices  someone  else,  who  has  come  in  later,  edging 
into  the  line  ahead  of  him.  Then  he  will  certainly  be 
angry.  The  delay  threatened  is  only  a  matter  of  a 

250 


HOSTILITY 

few  seconds ;  but  here  is  a  question  of  justice,  a  case 
for  indignation,  a  chance  for  anger  to  come  forth  with 
the  sanction  of  thought. 

Another  phase  of  the  transformation  of  hostility  by 
reason  and  imagination,  is  that  it  tends  to  become 
more  discriminating  or  selective  as  regards  its  relation 
to  the  idea  of  the  person  against  whom  it  is  directed. 
In  a  sense  the  higher  hostility  is  less  personal  than 
the  lower ;  that  is,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  no  longer 
aimed  blindly  at  persons  as  wholes,  but  distinguishes 
in  some  measure  between  phases  or  tendencies  of 
them  that  are  obnoxious  and  others  that  are  not.  It 
is  not  the  mere  thought  of  X's  countenance,  or  other 
symbol,  that  arouses  resentment,  but  the  thought  of 
him  as  exhibiting  insincerity,  or  arrogance,  or  what- 
ever else  it  may  be  that  we  do  not  like ;  while  we  may 
preserve  a  liking  for  him  as  exhibiting  other  traits. 
Generally  speaking,  all  persons  have  much  in  them 
which,  if  imagined,  must  appear  amiable ;  so  that  if 
we  feel  only  animosity  toward  a  man  it  must  be  be- 
cause we  have  apprehended  him  only  in  a  partial 
aspect.  An  undisciplined  anger,  like  any  other  un- 
disciplined emotion,  always  tends  to  produce  these 
partial  and  indiscriminate  notions,  because  it  over- 
whelms symmetrical  thought  and  permits  us  to  see 
only  that  which  agrees  with  itself.  But  a  more  chast- 
ened sentiment  allows  a  juster  view,  so  that  it  becomes 
conceivable  that  we  should  love  our  enemies  as  well 
as  antagonize  the  faults  of  our  friends.  A  just  parent 
or  teacher  will  resent  the  insubordinate  behavior  of  a 

251 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

child  or  pupil  without  letting  go  of  affection,  and  the 
same  principle  holds  good  as  regards  criminals,  and 
all  proper  objects  of  hostility.  The  attitude  of 
society  toward  its  delinquent  members  should  be 
stem,  yet  sympathetic,  like  that  of  a  father  toward 
a  disobedient  child. 

It  is  the  tendency  of  modern  life,  by  educating  the 
imagination  and  rendering  all  sorts  of  people  con- 
ceivable, to  discredit  the  sweeping  conclusions  of 
impulsive  thought — as,  for  instance,  that  all  who 
commit  violence  or  theft  are  hateful  ill-doers,  and 
nothing  more — and  to  make  us  feel  the  fundamental 
likeness  of  human  nature  wherever  found.  Resent- 
ment against  ill-doing  should  by  no  means  disappear ; 
but  while  continuing  to  suppress  wrong  by  whatever 
means  proves  most  efficacious,  we  shall  perhaps  see 
more  and  more  clearly  that  the  people  who  are  guilty 
of  it  are  very  much  like  ourselves,  and  are  acting 
from  motives  to  which  we  also  are  subject. 

It  is  often  asserted  or  assumed  that  hostile  feeling 
is  in  its  very  nature  obnoxious  and  painful  to  the 
human  mind,  and  persists  in  spite  of  us,  as  it  were, 
because  it  is  forced  upon  us  by  the  competitive  con- 
ditions of  existence.  This  view  seems  to  me  hardly 
sound.  I  should  rather  say  that  the  mental  and 
social  harmfulness  of  anger,  in  common  experience,  is 
due  not  so  much  to  its  peculiar  character  as  hostile 
feeling,  as  to  the  fact  that,  like  lust,  it  is  so  sur- 
charged with  instinctive  energy  as  to  be  difficult  to 

252 


HOSTILITY 

control  and  limit  to  its  proper  function  ;  while,  if  not 
properly  disciplined,  it  of  course  introduces  disorder 
and  pain  into  the  mental  life. 

To  a  person  in  robust  condition,  with  plenty  of 
energy  to  spare,  a  thorough-going  anger,  far  from 
being  painful,  is  an  expansive,  I  might  say  glorious, 
experience,  ivhile  the  Jit  is  on  and  has  full  control.  A. 
man  in  a  rage  does  not  want  to  get  out  of  it,  but  has 
a  full  sense  of  life  which  he  impulsively  seeks  to  con- 
tinue by  repelling  suggestions  tending  to  calm  him. 
It  is  only  when  it  has  begun  to  pall  upon  him  that  he 
is  really  willing  to  be  appeased.  This  may  be  seen 
by  observing  the  behavior  of  impulsive  children, 
and  also  of  adults  whose  passions  are  undisci- 
plined. 

An  enduring  hatred  may  also  be  a  source  of  satis- 
faction to  some  minds,  though  this  I  believe  to  be 
unusual  in  these  days,  and  becoming  more  so.  One 
who  reads  Hazlitt's  powerful  and  sincere,  though  per- 
haps unhealthy,  essay  on  the  Pleasure  of  Hating, 
will  see  that  the  thing  is  possible.  In  most  cases 
remorse  and  distress  set  in  so  soon  as  the  fit  of  anger 
begins  to  abate,  and  its  destructive  incompatibility 
with  the  established  order  and  harmony  of  the  mind 
begins  to  be  felt.  There  is  a  conviction  of  sin,  the 
pain  of  a  shattered  ideal,  just  as  there  is  after  yield- 
ing to  any  other  unchastened  passion.  The  cause  of 
the  pain  seems  to  be  not  so  much  the  peculiar  char- 
acter of  the  feeling  as  its  exorbitant  intensity. 

Any  simple  and  violent  passion  is  likely  to  be  felt  // 
253 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

as  painful  and  wrong  in  its  after-effects  because  it 
destroys  that  harmony  or  synthesis  that  reason  and 
conscience  strive  to  produce  ;  and  this  effect  is  prob- 
ably more  and  more  felt  as  the  race  advances  and 
mental  life  becomes  more  complex.  The  conditions 
of  civilization  require  of  us  so  extensive  and  continu- 
ous an  expenditure  of  psychical  force,  that  we  no  longer 
have  the  superabundance  of  emotional  energy  that 
makes  a  violent  outlet  agreeable.  Habits  and  prin- 
ciples of  self-control  naturally  arise  along  with  the 
increasing  need  for  economy  and  rational  guidance  of 
emotion ;  and  whatever  breaks  through  them  causes 
exhaustion  and  remorse.  Any  gross  passion  comes 
to  be  felt  as  "the  expense  of  spirit  in  a  waste  of 
shame."  Spasms  of  violent  feeling  properly  belong 
with  a  somewhat  apathetic  habit  of  life,  whose  accu- 
mulating energies  they  help  to  dissipate,  and  are  as 
much  out  of  place  to-day  as  the  hard-drinking  habits 
of  our  Saxon  ancestors. 

The  sort  of  men  that  most  feel  the  need  of  hostility 
as  a  spur  to  exertion  are,  I  imagine,  those  of  super- 
abundant vitality  and  somewhat  sluggish  tempera- 
ment, like  Goethe  and  Bismarck,  both  of  whom  de- 
clared that  it  was  essential  to  them.  There  is  also 
a  great  deal  of  old-fashioned  personal  hatred  in  re- 
mote and  quiet  places,  like  the  mountains  of  North 
Carolina,  and  probably  among  all  classes  who  do 
not  much  feel  the  stress  of  civilization.  But  to 
most  of  those  who  share  fully  in  the  life  of  the 
time,  intense  personal  animosities  are  painful  and  de- 

254 


HOSTILITY 

structive,  and  many  fine  spirits  are  ruined  by  failure 
to  inhibit  them. 

The  kind  of  man  most  characteristic  of  these  times, 
I  take  it,  does  not  allow  himself  to  be  drawn  into 
the  tangle  of  merely  personal  hatred,  but,  Cultivating 
a  tolerance  for  all  sorts  of  men,  he  yet  maintains  a 
sober  and  determined  antagonism  toward  all  tenden- 
cies or  purposes  that  conflict  with  his  true  self,  with 
whatever  he  has  most  intimately  appropriated  and 
identified  with  his  character.  He  is  always  courte- 
ous, cherishes  as  much  as  possible  those  kindly  senti- 
ments which  are  not  only  pleasant  and  soothing  but 
do  much  to  oil  the  machinery  of  his  enterprises,  and 
by  wasting  no  energy  on  futile  passion  is  enabled  to 
think  all  the  more  clearly  and  act  the  more  inflexibly 
when  he  finds  antagonism  necessary.  A  man  of  the 
world  of  the  modern  type  is  hardly  ever  dramatic  in 
the  style  of  Shakespeare's  heroes.  He  usually  ex- 
presses himself  in  the  most  economical  manner  pos- 
sible, and  if  he  has  to  threaten,  for  instance,  knows 
how  to  do  it  by  a  movement  of  the  lips,  or  the  turn 
of  a  phrase  in  a  polite  note.  If  cruder  and  more 
violent  tactics  are  necessary,  to  impress  vulgar  minds, 
he  is  very  likely  to  depute  this  rough  work  to  a  sub- 
ordinate. A  foreman  of  track  hands  may  have  to 
be  a  loud-voiced,  strong-armed,  palpably  aggressive 
person ;  but  the  president  of  the  road  is  commonly 
quiet  and  mild-mannered. 

The  mind  is  greatly  aided  in  the  control  of  ani 
mosity  by  the  existence  of  ready-made  and  socially 

255 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND   THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

accepted  standards  of  right.  Suffering  from  his  own 
angry  passions  and  from  those  of  others,  one  looks 
out  for  some  criterion,  some  rule  of  what  is  just  and 
fair  among  persons,  which  he  may  hold  himself  and 
others  to,  and  moderate  antagonism  by  removing 
the  sense  of  peculiar  injury.  Opposition  itself,  with- 
in certain  limits,  comes  to  be  regarded  as  part  of  the 
reasonable  order  of  things.  In  this  view  the  function 
of  moral  standards  is  the  same  as  that  of  courts  of 
justice  in  grosser  conflicts.  All  good  citizens  want  the 
laws  to  be  definite  and  vigorously  enforced,  in  order 
to  avoid  the  uncertainty,  waste,  and  destruction  of  a 
lawless  condition.  In  the  same  way  right-minded 
people  want  definite  moral  standards,  enforced  by 
general  opinion,  in  order  to  save  the  mental  wear  and 
tear  of  uuguided  feeling.  It  is  a  great  relief  to  a 
I  person  harassed  by  hostile  emotion  to  find  a  point  of 
view  from  which  this  emotion  appears  wrong  or  irra- 
tional, so  that  he  can  proceed  definitely  and  with  the 
sanction  of  his  reason  to  put  it  down.  The  next  best 
thing,  perhaps,  is  to  have  the  hostility  definitely  ap- 
proved by  reason,  so  that  he  may  indulge  it  without 
further  doubt.  The  unsettled  condition  is  worst  of 
all. 

This  control  of  hostility  by  a  sense  of  common 
allegiance  to  rule  is  well  illustrated  by  athletic  games. 
When  properly  conducted  they  proceed  upon  a  defi- 
nite understanding  of  what  is  fair,  and  no  lasting 
anger  is  felt  for  any  hurts  inflicted,  so  long  as  this 
standard  of  fairness  is  maintained.  It  is  the  same 

256 


HOSTILITY 

in  war :  soldiers  do  not  necessarily  feel  any  anger  at 
other  soldiers  who  are  trying  to  shoot  them  to  death. 
That  is  thought  of  as  within  the  rules  of  the  game. 
As  Admiral  Cervera's  chief  of  staff  is  reported  to 
have  said  to  Admiral  Sampson,  "  You  know  there  is 
nothing  personal  in  this."  But  if  the  white  flag  is 
used  treacherously,  explosive  bullets  employed,  or 
the  moral  standard  otherwise  transgressed,  there  is 
hard  feeling.  It  is  very  much  the  same  with  the 
multiform  conflicts  of  purpose  in  modern  industrial 
life.  It  is  not  clear  that  competition  as  such, 
apart  from  the  question  of  fairness  or  unfairness,  has 
any  tendency  to  increase  hostility.  Competition 
and  the  clash  of  purposes  are  inseparable  from  ac- 
tivity, and  are  felt  to  be  so.  Ill-feeling  flourishes  no 
more  in  an  active,  stirring  state  of  society  than  in  a 
stagnant  state.  The  trouble  with  our  industrial  re- 
lations is  not  the  mere  extent  of  competition,  but 
the  partial  lack  of  established  laws,  rules,  and  cus- 
toms, to  determine  what  is  right  and  fair  in  it. 
This  partial  lack  of  standards  is  connected  with  the 
rapid  changes  in  industry  and  industrial  relations 
among  men,  with  which  the  development  of  law  and  of 
moral  criteria  has  by  no  means  kept  pace.  Hence  there 
arises  great  uncertainty  as  to  what  some  persons  and 
classes  may  rightly  and  fairly  require  of  other  persons 
and  classes;  and  this  uncertainty  lets  loose  angry 
imaginations. 

It  will  be  evident  that  I  do  not  look  upon  affec- 
tion, or  anger,  or  any  other  particular  mode  of  feeling, 

25? 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

as  in  itself  good  or  bad,  social  or  anti-social,  progres- 
sive or  retrogressive.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  essen- 
tially good,  social,  or  progressive  thing,  in  this  regard, 
is  the  organization  and  discipline  of  all  emotions  by 
the  aid  of  reason,  in  harmony  with  a  developing  gen- 
eral life,  which  is  summed  up  for  us  in  conscience. 
That  this  development  of  the  general  life  is  such  as 
to  tend  ultimately  to  do  away  with  hostile  feeling 
altogether,  is  not  clear.  The  actively  good  people, 
the  just  men,  reformers,  and  prophets,  not  excepting 
him  who  drove  the  money-changers  from  the  Temple, 
have  been  and  are,  for  the  most  part,  people  who 
feel  the  spur  of  resentment ;  and  it  is  not  evident 
that  this  can  cease  to  be  the  case.  The  diversity  of 
human  minds  and  endeavors  seems  to  be  an  essen- 
tial part  of  the  general  plan  of  things,  and  shows  no 
tendency  to  diminish.  This  diversity  involves  a  con- 
flict of  ideas  and  purposes,  which,  in  those  who  take 
it  earnestly,  is  likely  to  occasion  hostile  feeling. 
This  feeling  should  become  less  wayward,  violent, 
bitter,  or  personal,  in  a  narrow  sense,  and  more  dis- 
ciplined, rational,  discriminating,  and  quietly  persist- 
ent. That  it  ought  to  disappear  is  certainly  not  ap- 
parent. 

Something  similar  to  what  has  been  said  of  anger 
will  hold  true  of  any  well-marked  type  of  instinctive 
emotion.  If  we  take  fear,  for  instance,  and  try  to 
recall  our  experience  of  it  from  early  childhood  on, 
it  seems  clear  that,  while  the  emotion  itself  may 

258 


HOSTILITY 

change  but  little,  the  ideas,  occasions,  suggestions 
that  excite  it  depend  upon  the  state  of  our  intellect- 
ual and  social  development,  and  so  undergo  great  al- 
teration. The  feeling  does  not  tend  to  disappear, 
but  to  become  less  violent  and  spasmodic,  more  and 
more  social  as  regards  the  objects  that  excite  it,  and 
more  and  more  subject,  in  the  best  minds,  to  the  dis- 
cipline of  reason. 

The  fears  of  little  children  *  are  largely  excited  by 
immediate  sensible  experiences — darkness,  solitude, 
sharp  noises,  and  so  on.  Sensitive  persons  often 
remain  throughout  life  subject  to  irrational  fears  of 
this  sort,  and  it  is  well  known  that  they  play  a  con- 
spicuous part  in  hysteria,  insanity,  and  other  weak  or 
morbid  conditions.  But  for  the  most  part  the  healthy 
adult  mind  becomes  accustomed  and  indifferent  to 
these  simple  phenomena,  and  transfers  its  emotional 
sensibility  to  more  complex  interests.  These  inter- 
ests are  for  the  most  part  sympathetic,  involving  our 
social  rather  than  our  material  self — our  standing  in 
the  minds  of  other  people,  the  well-being  of  those  we 
care  for,  and  so  on.  Yet  these  fears — fear  of  stand- 
ing alone,  of  losing  one's  place  in  the  flow  of  human 
action  and  sympathy,  fear  for  the  character  and  suc- 
cess of  those  near  to  us — have  often  the  very  quality 
of  childish  fear.  A  man  cast  out  of  his  regular  occu- 
pation and  secure  place  in  the  system  of  the  world 
feels  a  terror  like  that  of  the  child  in  the  dark ;  just  as 

*  Compare  G.  Stanley  Hall's  study  of  Fear  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  viii.,  p.  147. 

259 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

impulsive,  perhaps  just  as  purposeless  and  paralyz- 
ing. The  main  difference  seems  to  be  that  the  latter 
fear  is  stimulated  by  a  complex  idea,  implying  a 
socially  imaginative  habit  of  mind. 

Social  fear,  of  a  sort  perhaps  somewhat  morbid,  is 
vividly  depicted  by  Rousseau  in  the  passage  of  his 
Confessions  where  he  describes  the  feeling  that  led 
him  falsely  to  accuse  a  maid-servant  of  a  theft  which 
he  had  himself  committed.  "  When  she  appeared  my 
heart  was  agonized,  but  the  presence  of  so  many 
people  was  more  powerful  than  my  compunction.  I 
did  not  fear  punishment,  but  I  dreaded  shame :  I 
dreaded  it  more  than  death,  more  than  the  crime, 
more  than  all  the  world.  I  would  have  buried,  hid  my- 
self in  the  centre  of  the  earth :  invincible  shame  bore 
down  every  other  sentiment ;  shame  alone  caused  all 
my  impudence,  and  in  proportion  as  I  became  crimi- 
nal the  fear  of  discovery  rendered  me  intrepid.  I 
felt  no  dread  but  that  of  being  detected,  of  being 
publicly  and  to  my  face  declared  a  thief,  liar,  and 
calumniator.  .  .  ."* 

So  also  we  might  distinguish,  as  in  the  case  of 
anger,  a  higher  form  of  social  fear,  one  that  is  not 
narrowly  personal,  but  relates  to  some  socially 
derived  ideal  of  good  or  right.  For  instance,  in  a 
soldier  the  terror  of  roaring  guns  and  singing  bullets 

*  The  terrors  of  our  dreams  are  caused  largely  by  social  imagina- 
tions. Thus  Stevenson,  in  one  of  his  letters,  speaks  of  "  my  usual 
dreams  of  social  miseries  and  misunderstandings  and  all  sorts  of 
crucifixions  of  the  spirit." — Letters  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  i., 
p.  79. 

260 


HOSTILITY 

would  be  a  fear  of  the  lowest  or  animal  type.  Dread 
of  the  disgrace  to  follow  running  away  would  be  a 
social  fear,  yet  not  of  the  highest  sort,  because  the 
thing  dreaded  is  not  wrong  but  shame — a  compara- 
tively simple  and  non-rational  idea.  People  often  do 
what  they  know  is  wrong  under  the  influence  of  such 
fear,  as  did  Rousseau  in  the  incident  quoted  above. 
But,  supposing  the  soldier's  highest  ideal  to  be  the 
success  of  his  army  and  his  country,  a  fear  for  that, 
overcoming  all  lower  and  cruder  fears — selfish  fears 
as  they  would  ordinarily  be  called — would  be  moral 
or  ethical. 


261 


CHAPTER  VHI 

EMULATION 

CONFORMITY — NON-CONFORMITY — THE  Two  VIEWED  AS   COMPLE- 
MENTARY PHASES  OF  LIFE — RIVALRY — HERO-WORSHIP. 

IT  will  be  convenient  to  distinguish  three  sorts  of 
emulation — conformity,  rivalry^  and  hero-worship. 

Conformity  may  be  defined  as  the  endeavor  T;o 
maintain  a  standard  set  by  a  group.  It  is  a  volun- 
tary imitation  of  prevalent  modes  of  action,  distin- 
guished from  rivalry  and  other  aggressive  phases  of 
emulation  by  being  comparatively  passive,  aiming  to 
keep  up  rather  than  to  excel,  and  concerning  itself 
for  the  most  part  with  what  is  outward  and  formal. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  distinguished  from  involun- 
tary imitation  by  being  intentional  instead  of  me- 
chanical. Thus  it  is  not  conformity,  for  most  of  us, 
to  speak  the  English  language,  because  we  have 
practically  no  choice  in  the  matter,  but  we  might 
choose  to  conform  to  particular  pronunciations  or 
turns  of  speech  used  by  those  with  whom  we  wish 
to  associate. 

The  ordinary  motive  to  conformity  is  a  sense,  more 
or  less  vivid,  of  the  pains  and  inconveniences  of  non- 
conformity. Most  people  find  it  painful  to  go  to  an 
evening  company  in  any  other  than  the  customary 

262 


EMULATION 

dress ;  the  source  of  the  pain  appearing  to  be  a 
vague  sense  of  the  depreciatory  curiosity  which  one 
imagines  that  he  will  excite.  His  social  self-feeling 
is  hurt  by  an  unfavorable  view  of  himself  that  he 
attributes  to  others.  This  example  is  typical  of  the 
way  the  group  coerces  each  of  its  members  in  all 
matters  concerning  which  he  has  no  strong  and  defi- 
nite private  purpose.  The  world  constrains  us  with- 
out any  definite  intention  to  do  so,  merely  through 
the  impulse,  common  to  all,  to  despise  peculiarity  for 
which  no  reason  is  perceived.  "  Nothing  in  the  world 
more  subtle,"  says  George  Eliot,  speaking  of  the 
decay  of  higher  aims  in  certain  people,  "than  the 
process  of  their  gradual  change!  In  the  beginning 
they  inhaled  it  unknowingly ;  you  and  I  may  have 
sent  some  of  our  breath  toward  infecting  them,  when 
we  uttered  our  conforming  falsities  or  drew  our  silly 
conclusions :  or  perhaps  it  came  with  the  vibrations 
from  a  woman's  glance."  "  Solitude  is  fearsome  and 
heavy-hearted,"  and  non-conformity  condemns  us  to  it 
by  causing  gene,  if  not  dislike,  in  others,  and  so  inter- 
rupting that  relaxation  and  spontaneity  of  attitude 
that  is  required  for  the  easy  flow  of  sympathy  and 
communication.  Thus  it  is  hard  to  be  at  ease  with 
one  who  is  conspicuously  worse  or  better  dressed 
than  we  are,  or  whose  manners  are  notably  different ; 
no  matter  how  little  store  our  philosophy  may  set  by 
such  things.  On  the  other  hand,  a  likeness  in  small 
things  that  enables  them  to  be  forgotten  gives  people 
a  prima  facie  at-homeness  with  each  other  highly 

263 


favorable  to  sympathy ;  and  so  we  all  wish  to  have  it 
with  people  we  care  for. 

It  would  seem  that  the  repression  of  non-conform- 
ity is  a  native  impulse,  and  that  tolerance  always 
requires  some  moral  exertion.  We  all  cherish  our 
habitual  system  of  thought,  and  anything  that  breaks 
in  upon  it  in  a  seemingly  wanton  manner,  is  annoy- 
ing to  us  and  likely  to  cause  resentment.  So  our  first 
tendency  is  to  suppress  the  peculiar,  and  we  learn  to 
endure  it  only  when  we  must,  either  because  it  is 
shown  to  be  reasonable  or  because  it  proves  refrac- 
tory to  our  opposition.  The  innovator  is  nearly  as 
apt  as  anyone  else  to  put  down  innovation  in  others. 
Words  denoting  singularity  usually  carry  some  re- 
proach with  them ;  and  it  would  perhaps  be  found 
that  the  more  settled  the  social  system  is,  the  severer 
is  the  implied  condemnation.  In  periods  of  disor- 
ganization and  change,  such  as  ours  is  in  many  re- 
spects, people  are  educated  to  comparative  toler- 
ance by  unavoidable  familiarity  with  conflicting 
views — as  religious  toleration,  for  instance,  is  the 
outcome  of  the  continued  spectacle  of  competing 
creeds. 

Sir  Henry  Maine,  in  discussing  the  forces  that 
controlled  the  legal  decisions  of  a  Eoman  praetor, 
remarks  that  he  "  was  kept  within  the  narrowest 
bounds  by  the  prepossessions  imbibed  from  early 
training  and  by  the  strong  restraints  of  professional 
opinion,  restraints  of  which  the  stringency  can  only 
be  appreciated  by  those  who  have  personally  expe- 

264 


EMULATION 

rienced  them."*  In  the  same  way  every  profession, 
trade  or  handicraft,  every  church,  circle,  fraternity  or 
clique,  has  its  more  or  less  definite  standards,  con- 
formity to  which  it  tends  to  impose  on  all  its  mem- 
bers. It  is  not  at  all  essential  that  there  should  be 
any  deliberate  purpose  to  set  up  these  standards,  or 
any  special  machinery  for  enforcing  them.  They 
spring  up  spontaneously,  as  it  were,  by  an  uncon- 
scious process  of  assimilation,  and  are  enforced  by 
the  mere  inertia  of  the  minds  constituting  the  group. 
Thus  every  variant  idea  of  conduct  has  to  fight  its 
way :  as  soon  as  anyone  attempts  to  do  anything  un- 
expected the  world  begins  to  cry,  "  Get  in  the  rut ! 
Get  in  the  rut !  Get  in  the  rut !  "  and  shoves,  stares, 
coaxes,  and  sneers  until  he  does  so— or  until  he 
makes  good  his  position,  and  so,  by  altering  the 
standard  in  a  measure,  establishes  a  new  basis  of 
conformity.  There  are  no  people  who  are  alto- 
gether non-conformers,  or  who  are  completely  toler- 
ant of  non-conformity  in  others.  Mr.  Lowell,  who 
wrote  some  of  the  most  stirring  lines  in  literature  in 
defence  of  non-conformity,  was  himself  conventional 
and  an  upholder  of  conventions  in  letters  and  social 
intercourse.  Either  to  be  exceptional  or  to  appreci- 
ate the  exceptional  requires  a  considerable  expendi- 
ture of  energy,  and  no  one  can  afford  this  in  many 
directions.  There  are  many  persons  who  take 
pains  to  keep  their  minds  open ;  and  there  are 
groups,  countries,  and  periods  which  are  compara- 

*  Maine,  Ancient  Law,  p.  62. 
265 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trvnely  favorable  to  open-mindedness  and  variation; 
but  conformity  is  always  the  rule  and  non-conform- 
ity the  exception. 

Conformity  is  a  sort  of  co-operation:  one  of  its 
functions  is  to  economize  energy.  The  standards 
which  it  presses  upon  the  individual  are  often  elabo- 
rate and  valuable  products  of  cumulative  thought  and 
experience,  and  whatever  imperfections  they  may 
have  they  are,  as  a  whole,  an  indispensable  foundation 
for  life :  it  is  inconceivable  that  anyone  should  dis- 
pense with  them.  If  I  imitate  the  dress,  the  manners, 
the  household  arrangements  of  other  people,  I  save 
so  much  mental  energy  for  other  purposes.  It  is  best 
that  each  should  originate  where  he  is  specially  fitted 
to  do  so,  and  follow  others  where  they  are  better 
qualified  to  lead.  It  is  said  with  truth  that  con- 
formity is  a  drag  upon  genius ;  but  it  is  equally  true 
and  important  that  its  general  action  upon  human 
nature  is  elevating.  We  get  by  it  the  selected  and 
systematized  outcome  of  the  past,  and  to  be  brought 
up  to  its  standards  is  a  brief  recapitulation  of  social 
development:  it  sometimes  levels  down  but  more 
generally  levels  up.  It  may  be  well  for  purposes  of 
incitement  to  goad  our  individuality  by  the  abuse  of 
conformity;  but  statements  made  with  this  in  view 
lack  accuracy.  It  is  good  for  the  young  and  aspiring 
to  read  Emerson's  praise  of  self-reliance,  in  order 
that  they  may  have  courage  to  fight  for  their  ideas  ; 
but  we  may  also  sympathize  with  Goethe  when  he 
says  that  "  nothing  more  exposes  us  to  madness  than 

266 


EMULATION 

distinguishing  us  from  others,  and  nothing  more  con- 
tributes to  maintaining  our  common-sense  than  living 
in  the  universal  way  with  multitudes  of  men."  * 

There  are  two^aspects  of  non- conformity :  first,  a  re- 
bellious impulse  or  "  contrary  suggestion  "  leading  to 
an  avoidance  of  accepted  standards  in  a  spirit  of  oppo- 
sition, without  necessary  reference  to  any  other  stand- 
ards ;  and,  second,  an  appeal  from  present  andjgom- 
monpjace  standards  to~tE6se  that  are  comparatively 
remote  and  unusual.  These  two  usually  work  to- 
gether. One  is  led  to  a  mode  of  life  different  from 
that  of  the  people  about  him,  partly  by  intrinsic  con- 
trariness, and  partly  by  fixing  his  imagination  on  the 
ideas  and  practices  of  other  people  whose  mode  of 
life  he  finds  more  congenial. 

But  the  essence  of  non-conformity  as  a  personal 
attitude  consists  in  contrary  suggestion  or  the  spirit 
^of  opposition^ People  of  natural  energy  take  pleasure 
in  that  enhanced  feeling  of  self  that  comes  from 
consciously  not  doing  that  T?hich  is  suggested  or  en- 
joined upon  them  by  circumstances  and  by  other 
persons.  There  is  joy  in  the  sense  of  self-assertion  : 
it  is  sweet  to  do  one's  own  things ;  and  if  others  are 
against  him  one  feels  sure  they  are  his  own.  To  brave 
the  disapproval  of  men  is  tonic ;  it  is  like  climbing 
along  a  mountain  path  in  the  teeth  of  the  wind ;  one 
feels  himself  as  a  cause,  and  knows  the  distinctive 
efficacy  of  his  being.  Thus  self-feeling  which,  if 

*Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship,  v.,  16,  Carlyle's  Transla- 
tion. 

267 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

somewhat  languid  and  on  the  defensive,  causes  us  to 
avoid  peculiarity,  may,  when  in  a  more  energetic  con- 
dition, cause  us  to  seek  it ;  just  as  we  rejoice  at  one 
time  to  brave  the  cold,  and  at  another  to  cower  over 
the  fire,  according  to  the  vigor  of  our  circulation. 

This  may  easily  be  observed  in  vigorous  children  : 
each  in  his  way  will  be  found  to  attach  himself  to 
methods  of  doing  things  which  he  regards  as  peculi- 
arly his  own,  and  to  delight  in  asserting  these  methods 
against  opposition.  It  is  also  the  basis  of  some  of 
the  deepest  and  most  significant  differences  between 
races  and  individuals.  Controlled  by  intellect  and 
\  purpose  this  passion  for  differentiation  becomes  self- 
S reliance,  self-discipline,  and  immutable  persistence  in 
'  a  private  aim  :  qualities  which  more  than  any  others 
make  the  greater  power  of  superior  persons  and  races. 
It  is  a  source  of  enterprise,  exploration,  and  endur- 
ance in  all  kinds  of  undertakings,  and  of  fierce  de- 
fence of  private  rights.  How  much  of  Anglo-Saxon 
history  is  rooted  in  the  intrinsic  cantankerousness  of 
the  race !  It  is  largely  this  that  makes  the  world- 
winning  pioneer,  who  keeps  pushing  on  because  he 
wants  a  place  all  to  himself,  and  hates  to  be  bothered 
by  other  people  over  whom  he  has  no  control.  On 
the  frontier  a  common  man  defines  himself  better  as 
a  cause.  He  looks  round  at  his  clearing,  his  cabin,  his 
growing  crops,  his  wife,  his  children,  his  dogs,  horses, 
and  cattle,  and  says,  I  did  it:  they  are  mine.  All  that 
he  sees  recalls  the  glorious  sense  of  things  won  by  his 
own  hand. 

268 


EMULATION 

Who  does  not  feel  that  it  is  a  noble  thing  to  stand 
alone,  to  steer  due  west  into  an  unknown  universe, 
like  Columbus,  or,  like  Nansen,  ground  the  ship  upon 
the  ice-pack  and  drift  for  the  North  Pole  ?  "  Adhere 
to  your  own  act,"  says  Emerson,  "  and  congratulate 
yourself  if  you  have  done  something  strange  and 
extravagant,  and  broken  the  monotony  of  a  decorous 
age."  We  like  that  epigram,  Victrix  causa  diis 
placuit,  sed  victa  Catoni,  because  we  like  the  thought 
that  a  man  stood  out  alone  against  the  gods  them- 
selves, and  set  his  back  against  the  course  of  nature. 
The 

' '  souls  that  stood  alone, 

While  the  men  they  agonized  for  hurled  the  contumelious 
stone," 

are  not  to  be  thought  of  as  victims  of  self-sacrifice. 
Many  of  them  rejoiced  in  just  that  isolation,  and  dar- 
ing, and  persistence ;  so  that  it  was  not  self-sacrifice 
but  self-realization.  Conflict  is  a  necessity  of  the 
active  soul,  and  if  a  social  order  could  be  created 
from  which  it  were  absent,  that  order  would  perish 
as  uncongenial  to  human  nature.  "  To  be  a  man  is 
to  be  a  non-conformer." 

I  think  that  people  go  into  all  sorts  of  enterprises, 
for  instance  into  novel  and  unaccredited  sorts  of 
philanthropy,  with  a  spirit  of  adventure  not  far  re- 
moved from  the  spirit  that  seeks  the  North  Pole.  It 
is  neither  true  nor  wholesome  to  think  of  the  "  good  " 
as  actuated  by  motives  radically  different  in  kind 
from  those  of  ordinary  human  nature ;  and  I  imagine 

269 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDEE 

the  best  of  them  are  far  from  wishing  to  be  thus 
thought  of.  Undertakings  of  reform  and  philanthropy 
appeal  to  the  mind  in  a  double  aspect.  There  is,  of 
course,  the  desire  to  accomplish  some  worthy  end,  to 
effectuate  some  cherished  sentiment  which  the  world 
appears  to  ignore,  to  benefit  the  oppressed,  to  advance 
human  knowledge,  or  the  like.  But  behind  that  is 
the  vague  need  of  self-expression,  of  creation,  of  a 
momentous  experience,  so  that  one  may  know  that 
one  has  really  lived.  And  the  finer  imaginations  are 
likely  to  find  this  career  of  novelty  and  daring,  not  in 
the  somewhat  outworn  paths  of  war  and  exploration, 
but  in  new  and  precarious  kinds  of  social  activity. 
So  one  may  sometimes  meet  in  social  settlements  and 
charity  organization  bureaus  the  very  sort  of  people 
that  led  the  Crusades  into  Palestine.  I  do  not  speak 
at  random,  but  have  several  persons  in  mind  who 
seem  to  me  to  be  of  this  sort. 

In  its  second  aspect  non-conformity  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  remoter  conformity.  The  rebellion 
against  social  influence  is  only  partial  and  apparent ; 
and  the  one  who  seems  to  be  out  of  step  with  the 
procession  is  really  keeping  time  to  another  music. 
As  Thoreau  said,  he  hears  a  different  drummer.  If  a 
boy  refuses  the  occupation  his  parents  and  friends 
think  best  for  him,  and  persists  in  working  at  some- 
thing strange  and  fantastic,  like  art  or  science,  it  is 
sure  to  be  the  case  that  his  most  vivid  life  is  not  with 
those  about  him  at  all,  but  with  the  masters  he  has 
known  through  books,  or  perhaps  seen  and  heard  for 

270 


EMULATION 

a  few  moments.  Environment,  in  the  sense  of  social 
influence  actually  at  work,  is  far  from  the  definite 
and  obvious  thing  it  is  often  assumed  to  be.  Our 
real  environment  consists  of  those  images  which  are 
most  present  to  pur  thoughts^  and  in  the  case  of  a 
vigorous,  growing  mind,  these  are  likely  to  be  some- 
thing quite  different  from  what  is  most  present  to  the 
sensejL,  The  group  to  which  we  give  allegiance,  and 
to  whose  standards  we  try  to  conform,- is  determined 
by  our  own  selective  affinity,  choosing  "among  all 
the  personal  miluences  accessible  to  us;  and  so  far 
as  we  select  with  any  independence  of  our  palpable 
companions,  we  have  the  appearance  of  non-con- 
formity. 

All  non-conformity  that  is  affirmative  or  con- 
structive must  act  by  this  selection  of  remoter  rela- 
tions ;  opposition,  by  itself,  being  sterile,  and  mean- 
ing nothing  beyond  personal  peculiarity.  There  is, 
therefore,  no  definite  line  between  conformity  and  non- 
conformity ;  there  is  simply  a  more  or  less  charac- 
teristic and  unusual  way  of  selecting  and  combining 
accessible  influences.  It  is  much  the  same  question 
as  that  of  invention  versus  imitation.  As  Professor 
Baldwin  points  out,  there  is  no  radical  separation 
between  these  two  aspects  of  human  thought  and 
action.  There  is  no  imitation  that  is  absolutely 
mechanical  and  uninventive — a  man  cannot  repeat  an 
act  without  putting  something  of  his  idiosyncrasy 
into  it  —  neither  is  there  any  invention  that  is  not 
imitative  in  the  sense  that  it  is  made  up  of  elements 

271 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

suggested  by  observation  and  experience.  What  the 
mind  does,  in  any  case,  is  to  reorganize  and  repro- 
duce the  suggested  materials  in  accordance  with  its 
own  structure  and  tendency ;  and  we  judge  the  result 
as  imitative  or  inventive,  original  or  commonplace, 
according  as  it  does  or  does  not  strike  us  as  a  new 
and  fruitful  employment  of  the  common  material.* 

A  just  view  of  the  matter  should  embrace  the 
whole  of  it  at  once,  aiul  see  conformity  and  non- 
conformity as  normal  and  complementary  phases  of 
human  activity.  In  their  quieter  moods  men  have  a 
pleasure  in  social  agreement  and  the  easy  flow  of 
sympathy,  which  makes  non-conformity  uncomfort- 
able. But  when  their  energy  is  full  and  demanding 

*  In  reading  studies  of  a  particular  aspect  of  life,  like  M.  Tarde's 
brilliant  work,  Les  Lois  de  1'Imitation,  it  is  well  to  remember  that 
there  are  many  such  aspects,  any  of  which,  if  expounded  at  length 
and  in  an  interesting  manner,  might  appear  for  the  time  to  be  of 
more  importance  than  any  other.  I  think  that  other  phases  of 
social  activity,  such,  for  instance,  as  communication,  competition, 
differentiation,  adaptation,  idealization,  have  as  good  claims  as 
imitation  to  be  regarded  as  the  social  process,  and  that  a  book 
similar  in  character  to  M.  Tarde's  might,  perhaps,  be  written  upon 
any  one  of  them.  The  truth  is  that  the  real  process  is  a  multiform 
thing  of  which  these  are  glimpses.  They  are  good  so  long  as  we 
recognize  that  they  are  glimpses  and  use  them  to  help  out  our  per- 
ception of  that  many-sided  whole  which  life  is ;  but  if  they  become 
doctrines  they  are  objectionable. 

The  Struggle  for  Existence  is  another  of  these  glimpses  of  life 
which  just  now  seems  to  many  the  dominating  fact  of  the  universei 
chiefly  because  attention  has  been  fixed  upon  it  by  copious  and  in- 
teresting exposition.  As  it  has  had  many  predecessors  in  this  place 
of  importance,  so  doubtless  it  will  have  many  successors. 

272 


EMULATION 

an  outlet  through  the  instincts,  it  can  only  be  ap- 
peased by  something  which  gives  the  feeling  of  self- 
assertion.  They  are  agitated  by  a  "  creative  impa- 
tience," an  outburst  of  the  primal  need  to  act;  like 
the  Norsemen,  of  whom  Gibbon  says :  "  Impatient 
of  a  bleak  climate  and  narrow  limits,  they  started 
from  the  banquet,  sounded  their  horn,  ascended  their 
vessels,  and  explored  every  coast  that  promised  either 
spoil  or  settlement."  *  In  social  intercourse  this  ac- 
tive spirit  finds  its  expression  largely  in  resisting  the 
will  of  others  ;  and  the  spirit  of  opposition  and  self- 
differentiation  thus  arising  is  the  principal  direct 
stimulus  to  non-conformity.  This  spirit,  however, 
has  no  power  of  absolute  creation,  and  is  forced  to 
seek  for  suggestions  and  materials  in  the  minds  of 
others ;  so  that  the  independence  is  only  relative  to 
the  more  immediate  and  obvious  environment,  and 
never  constitutes  a  real  revolt  from  the  social 
order. 

Naturally  non-conformity  is  characteristic  of  the 
more  energetic  states  of  the  human  mind.  Men  of 
great  vigor  are  sure  to  be  non-conformers  in  some 
important  respect ;  youth  glories  in  non-conformity, 
while  age  usually  comes  back  to  the  general  point  of 
view.  "  Men  are  conservatives  when  they  are  least 
vigorous,  or  when  they  are  most  luxurious.  They 
are  conservatives  after  dinner,  or  before  taking  their 
rest ;  when  they  are  sick  or  aged.  In  the  morning, 
or  when  their  intellect  or  their  conscience  has  been 
*  Decline  and  Fall,  vol.  vii.,  p.  82;  Milman-Sniith  edition. 
273 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

aroused,  when  they  hear  music,  or  when  they  read 
poetry,  they  are  radicals."* 

The  rational  attitude  of  the  individual  toward  the 
question  of  conformity  or  non-conformity  in  his  own 
life,  would  seem  to  be :  assert  your  individuality  in 
matters  which  you  deem  important ;  conform  in  those 
you  deem  unimportant.  To  have  a  conspicuously  in- 
dividual way  of  doing  everything  is  impossible  to  a 
sane  person,  and  to  attempt  it  would  be  to  do  one's 
self  a  gratuitous  injury,  by  closing  the  channels  of 
sympathy  through  which  we  partake  of  the  life  around 
us.  We  should  save  our  strength  for  matters  in  re- 
gard to  which  persistent  conviction  impels  us  to  in- 
sist upon  our  own  way. 

Society,  like  every  living,  advancing  whole,  requires 
a  just  union  of  stability  and  change,  uniformity  and 
differentiation.  Conformity  is  the  phase  of  stability 
and  uniformity,  while  non- conformity  is  the  phase  of 
differentiation  and  change.  The  latter  cannot  intro- 
duce anything  wholly  new,  but  it  can  and  does  effect 
such  a  reorganization  of  existing  material  as  con- 
stantly to  transform  and  renew  human  life. 

I  mean  by  rivalry  a  competitive  striving  urged  on 
by  the  desire  to  win.  It  resembles  conformity  in 
that  the  impelling  idea  is  usually  a  sense  of  what 
other  people  are  doing  and  thinking,  and  especially 
of  what  they  are  thinking  of  us  :  it  differs  from  it 
chiefly  in  being  more  aggressive.  Conformity  aims 

*  Emerson,  address  on  New~En~gIan3  Reformers. 

274 


EMULATION 

to  keep  up  with  the  procession,  rivalry  to  get  ahead 
of  it.  The  former  is  moved  by  a  sense  of  the  pains 
and  inconveniences  of  differing  from  other  people, 
the  latter  by  an  eagerness  to  compel  their  admira- 
tion. Winning,  to  the  social  self,  usually  means 
conspicuous  success  in  making  some  desired  impres- 
sion upon  other  minds,  as  in  becoming  distinguished 
for  power,  wealth,  skill,  culture,  beneficence,  or  the 
like. 

On  the  other  hand,  rivalry  may  be  distinguished 
from  finer  sorts  of  emulation  by  being  more  simple, 
crude,  and  direct.  It  implies  no  very  subtle  mental 
activity,  no  elaborate  or  refined  ideal.  If  a  spirited 
horse  hears  another  overtaking  him  from  behind,  he 
pricks  up  his  ears,  quickens  his  steps,  and  does  his 
best  to  keep  ahead.  And  human  rivalry  appears  to 
have  much  of  this  instinctive  element  in  it ;  to  be- 
come aware  of  life  and  striving  going  on  about  us 
seems  to  act  immediately  upon  the  nerves,  quicken- 
ing an  impulse  to  live  and  strive  in  like  manner.  An 
eager  person  will  not  hear  or  read  of  vivid  action  of 
any  sort  without  feeling  some  impulse  to  get  into  it ; 
just  as  he  cannot  mingle  in  a  hurrying,  excited  crowd 
without  sharing  in  the  excitement  and  hurry,  wheth- 
er he  knows  what  it  is  all  about  or  not.  The  genesis 
of  ambition  is  often  something  as  follows  :  one  min- 
gles with  men,  his  self-feeling  is  vaguely  aroused, 
and  he  wishes  to  be  something  to  them.  He  sees, 
perhaps,  that  he  cannot  excel  in  just  what  they  are 
doing,  and  so  he  takes  refuge  in  his  imagination, 

275 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

thinking  what  he  can  do  which  is  admirable,  and  de- 
termining to  do  it.  Thus  he  goes  home  nursing  se- 
cret ambitions. 

The  motive  of  rivalry,  then,  is  a  strong  sense 
that  there  is  a  race  going  on,  and  an  impulsive 
eagerness  to  be  in  it.  It  is  rather  imitative  than  in- 
yentive  ;  the  idea  being  not  so  much  to  achieve  an 
object  for  its  own  sake,  because  it  is  reflectively 
judged  to  be  worthy,  as  to  get  what  the  rest  are  af- 
ter. There  is  conformity  in  ideals  combined  with  a 
thirst  for  personal  distinction.  It  has  little  tendency 
toward  innovation,  notwithstanding  the  element  of 
antagonism  in  it ;  but  takes  its  color  and  character 
from  the  prevalent  social  life,  accepting  and  pursuing 
the  existing  ideal  of  success,  and  whatever  special 
quality  it  has  depends  upon  the  quality  of  that  ideal. 
There  is,  for  instance,  nothing  so  gross  or  painful 
that  it  may  not  become  an  object  of  pursuit  through 
emulation.  Charles  Booth,  who  has  studied  so  mi- 
nutely the  slums  of  London,  says  that  "  among  the 
poor,  men  drink  on  and  on  from  a  perverted  pride," 
and  among  another  class  a  similar  sentiment  leads 
women  to  inflict  surprising  deformities  of  the  trunk 
upon  themselves. 

Professor  William    James   suggests    that  rivalry 

[does  nine-tenths  of  the  world's  work.*     Certainly  no 

motive  is  so  generally  powerful  among  active,  efficient 

men  of  the  ordinary  type,  the  type  that  keeps  the 

ball  moving  all  over  the  world.     Intellectual  initi- 

*  Psychology,  vol.  ii. ,  p.  409. 
276 


EMULATIOK 

ative,  high  and  persistent  idealism,  are  rare.  The 
great  majority  of  able  men  are  ambitious,  without 
having  intrinsic  traits  that  definitely  direct  their  am- 
bition to  any  particular  object.  They  feel  their  way 
about  among  the  careers  which  their  time,  their 
country,  their  early  surroundings  and  training,  make 
accessible  to  them,  and,  selecting  the  one  which 
seems  to  promise  the  best  chance  of  success,  they 
throw  themselves  into  the  pursuit  of  the  things  that 
conduce  to  that  success.  If  the  career  is  law,  they 
strive  to  win  cases  and  gain  wealth  and  prestige, 
accepting  the  moral  code  and  other  standards  that 
they  find  in  actual  use ;  and  it  is  the  same,  mutatis 
mutandis,  in  commerce,  politics,  the  ministry,  the 
various  handicrafts,  and  so  on. 

There  is  thus  nothing  morally  distinctive  about  \ 
rivalry  ;  it  is  harmful  or  beneficent  according  to  the 
objects  and  standards  with  reference  to  which  it  acts. 
All  depends  upon  the  particular  game  in  which  one 
takes  a  hand.  It  may  be  said  in  a  broad  way,  how- 
ever, that  rivalry  supplies  a  stimulus  wholesome  and 
needful  to  the  great  majority  of  men,  and  that  it  is, 
on  the  whole,  a  chief  progressive  force,  utilizing  the 
tremendous  power  of  ambition,  and  controlling  it  to 
the  furtherance  of  ends  that  are  socialty  approved. 
The  greaJL  mass  ,of  what  we  Jud^e  to  be  evil  Js  of  a 
negative  rather  than  a  positive  character,  arising  not 
from  misdirected  ambition  but  from  apathy  or  sen- 
quality,  from  a.  falling  short  of  that  active,  socialTiu-' 
manity  which  ambition  implies. 

•*  _^--^,  _._„.,., ..." JL-— —"•— -sw—vw, 

277 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

By  hero-worship  is  here  meant  an  emulation  that 
strives  to  imitate  some  admired  character,  in  a  spirit 
not  of  rivalry  or  opposition,  but  of  loyal  enthusiasm. 
It  is  higher  than  rivalry,  in  the  sense  that  it  involves 
a  superior  grade  of  mental  activity — though,  of  course, 
there  is  no  sharp  line  of  separation  between  them. 
While  the  other  is  a  rather  gross  and  simple  impulse, 
common  to  all  men  and  to  the  higher  animals,  the 
hero-worshipper  is  an  idealist,  imaginative;  the  ob- 
ject that  arouses  his  enthusiasm  and  his  endeavor 
does  so  because  it  bears  a  certain  relation  to  his  aspi- 
rations, to  his  constructive  thought.  Hero-worship 
is  thus  more  selective,  more  significant  of  the  special 
character  and  tendencies  of  the  individual,  in  every 
way  more  highly  organized  than  rivalry. 

It  has  a  great  place  in  all  active,  aspiring  lives, 
especially  in  the  plastic  period  of  youth.  We  feed 
our  characters,  while  they  are  forming,  upon  the 
vision  of  admired  models ;  an  ardent  sympathy  dwells 
upon  the  traits  through  which  their  personality  is 
communicated  to  us — facial  expression,  voice,  sig- 
nificant movements,  and  so  on.  In  this  way  those 
tendencies  in  us  that  are  toward  them  are  literally 
fed ;  are  stimulated,  organized,  made  habitual  and 
familiar.  As  already  pointed  out,  sympathy  appears 
to  be  an  act  of  growth ;  and  this  is  especially  true  of 
the  sort  of  sympathy  we  call  hero-worship.  All  auto- 
biographies which  deal  with  youth  show  that  the 
early  development  of  character  is  through  a  series  of 
admirations  and  enthusiasms,  which  pass  away,  to  be 

278 


EMULATION 

sure,  but  leave  character  the  richer  for  their  exist- 
ence. They  begin  in  the  nursery,  flourish  with  great 
vigor  in  the  school-yard,  attain  a  passionate  intensity 
during  adolescence,  and  though  they  abate  rapidly  in 
adult  life,  do  not  altogether  cease  until  the  power  of 
growth  is  lost.  All  will  find,  I  imagine,  if  they  recall 
their  own  experience,  that  times  of  mental  progress 
were  times  when  the  mind  found  or  created  heroes  to 
worship,  often  owning  allegiance  to  several  at  the 
same  time,  each  representing  a  particular  need  of 
development.  The  active  tendencies  of  the  school- 
boy lead  to  admiration  of  the  strongest  and  boldest 
of  his  companions ;  or  perhaps,  more  imaginative,  he 
fixes  his  thoughts  on  some  famous  fighter  or  explorer ; 
later  it  is  possibly  a  hero  of  statesmanship  or  liter- 
ature who  attracts  him.  Whatever  the  tendency,  it 
is  sure  to  have  its  complementary  hero.  Even  science 
often  begins  in  hero-worship.  "  This  work,"  says 
Darwin  of  Humboldt's  "  Personal  Narrative,"  "stirred 
up  in  me  a  burning  zeal  to  add  even  the  most 
humble  contribution  to  the  noble  structure  of  Natural 
Science."  *  We  easily  forget  this  varied  and  im- 
passioned idealism  of  early  life  ;  but  "  the  thoughts 
of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts,"  and  it  is  precisely 
then  and  in  this  way  that  the  most  rapid  develop- 
ment of  character  takes  place.  J.  A.  Symonds,  speak- 
ing of  Professor  Jowett's  early  influence  upon  him 
says,  "  Obscurely  but  vividly  I  felt  my  soul  grow  by 
his  contact,  as  it  had  never  grown  before ; "  and  Goethe 
*  See  Darwin's  Life  and  Letters,  by  his  son,  vol.  i.,  p.  47. 
279 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

remarks  that  "  vicinity  to  tlie  master,  like  an  element, 
lifts  one  and  bears  him  on." 

I  If  youth  is  the  period  of  hero-worship,  so  also  is  it 
'  true  that  hero-worship,  more  than  anything  else,  per- 
haps, gives  one  the  sense  of  youth.  To  admire,  to 
expand  one's  self,  to  forget  the  rut,  to  have  a  sense  of 
newness  and  life  and  hope,  is  to  feel  young  at  any 
time  of  life.  "Whilst  we  converse  with  what  is 
above  us  we  do  not  grow  old  but  grow  young  "  ;  and 
that  is  what  hero-worship  means.  To  have  no  heroes 
is  to  have  no  aspiration,  to  live  on  the  momentum  of 
the  past,  to  be  thrown  back  upon  routine,  sensuality, 
and  the  narrow  self. 

As  hero-worship  becomes  more  imaginative,  it 
merges  insensibly  into  that  devotion  to  ideal  persons 
that  is  called  religious.  It  has  often  been  pointed 
out  that  the  feeling  men  have  toward  a  visible  leader 
and  master  like  Lincoln,  Lee,  Napoleon,  or  Garibaldi, 
is  psychologically  much  the  same  thing  as  the  wor- 
ship of  the  ideal  persons  of  religion.  Hero-worship 
is  a  kind  of  religion,  and  religion,  in  so  far  as  it  con- 
ceives persons,  is  a  kind  of  hero-worship.  Both  are 
expressions  of  that  intrinsically  social  or  communi- 
cative nature  of  human  thought  and  sentiment  which 
was  insisted  upon  in  a  previous  chapter.  That  the 
personality  toward  which  the  feeling  is  directed  is 
ideal  evidently  affords  no  fundamental  distinction. 
All  persons  are  ideal,  in  a  true  sense,  and  those 
whom  we  admire  and  reverence  are  peculiarly  so. 
That  is  to  say,  the  idea  of  a  person,  whether  his 

280 


EMULATION 

body  be  present  to  our  senses  or  not,  is  imaginative, 
a  synthesis,  an  interpretation  of  many  elements,  rest- 
ing upon  our  whole  experience  of  human  life,  not 
merely  upon  our  acquaintance  with  this  particular 
person  ;  and  the  more  our  admiration  and  reverence 
are  awakened  the  more  actively  ideal  and  imagina- 
tive does  our  conception  of  the  person  become.  Of 
course  we  never  see  a  person ;  we  see  a  few  visible 
traits  which  stimulate  our  imaginations  to  the  con- 
struction of  a  personal  idea  in  the  mind.  The  ideal 
persons  of  religion  are  not  fundamentally  different, 
psychologically  or  sociologically,  from  other  persons  ; 
they  are  personal  ideas  built  up  in  the  mind  out  of 
the  material  at  its  disposal,  and  serving  to  appease 
its  need  for  a  sort  of  intercourse  that  will  give  scope 
to  reverence,  submission,  trust,  and  self-expanding  en- 
thusiasm .  So  far  as  they  are  present  to  thought  and 
emotion,  and  so  work  upon  life,  they  are  real,  with 
that  immediate  social  reality  discussed  in  the  third 
chapter.  The  fact  that  they  have  attached  to  them 
no  visible  or  tangible  material  body,  similar  to  that 
of  other  persons,  is  indeed  an  important  fact,  but 
rather  of  physiological  than  of  psychological  or  so- 
cial interest.  Perhaps  it  is  not  going  too  far  to  say 
that  the  idea  of  God  is  specially  mysterious  only  from 
a  physiological  point  of  view ;  mentally  and  socially 
regarded  it  is  of  one  sort  with  other  personal  ideas, 
no  less  a  verifiable  fact,  and  no  more  or  less  inscru- 
table. It  must  be  obvious  to  anyone  who  reflects 
upon  the  matter,  I  should  think,  that  our  conceptions 

281 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  personality,  from  the  simple  and  sensuous  notions 
a  little  child  has  of  those  about  him,  up  to  the 
noblest  and  fullest  idea  of  deity  that  man  can  achieve, 
are  one  in  kind,  as  being  imaginative  interpretations 
of  experience,  and  form  a  series  in  which  there  are 
no  breaks,  no  gap  between  human  and  divine.  All 
is  human,  and  all,  if  you  please,  divine. 

If  there  are  any  who  hold  that  nothing  is  real  ex- 
cept what  can  be  seen  and  touched,  they  will  neces- 
sarily forego  the  study  of  persons  and  of  society; 
because  these  things  are  essentially  intangible  and 
invisible.  The  bodily  presence  furnishes  important 
assistance  in  the  forming  of  personal  ideas,  but  is 
not  essential.  I  never  saw  Shakespeare,  and  have 
no  lively  notion  of  how  he  looked.  His  reality,  his 
presence  to  my  mind,  consists  in  a  characteristic  im- 
pression made  upon  me  by  his  recorded  words,  an 
imaginative  interpretation  or  inference  from  a  book. 
In  a  manner  equally  natural  and  simple  the  religious 
mind  comes  to  the  idea  of  personal  deity  by  a  spon- 
taneous interpretation  of  life  as  a  whole.  The  two 
ideas  are  equally  real,  equally  incapable  of  verifica- 
tion to  the  senses. 


282 


CHAPTER  IX 
LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

LEADERSHIP  DEFINES  AND  ORGANIZES  VAGUE  TENDENCY — POWER 
AS  BASED  UPON  THE  MENTAL  STATE  OF  THE  ONE  SUBJECT  TO 
IT — THE  MENTAL  TRAITS  OF  A  LEADER  :  SIGNIFICANCE  AND 
BREADTH — WHY  THE  FAME  AND  POWER  OF  A  MAN  OFTEN 
TRANSCEND  HIS  REAL  CHARACTER — ASCENDENCY  OF  BELIEF 
AND  HOPE — MYSTERY — GOOD  FAITH  AND  IMPOSTURE — DOES 
THE  LEADER  REALLY  LEAD? 

BUT  ho\v  do  we  choose  our  heroes  ?  What  is  it  that 
gives  leadership  to  some  and  denies  it  to  others  ?  Can 
we  make  out  anything  like  a  rationale  of  personal 
ascendency?  We  can  hardly  hope  for  a  complete 
answer  to  these  questions,  which  probe  the  very  heart 
of  life  and  tendency,  but  at  least  the  attempt  to  an- 
swer them,  so  far  as  possible,  will  bring  us  into  an 
interesting  line  of  thought. 

It  is  plain  that  the  theory  of  ascendency  in- 
volves the  question  of  the  mind's  relative  valuation 

_^        j  _rr^^M_^A^^*"«*l***«^^^i^^^^™^a**^^'^i>^*»^*" 

of  the  suggestions  coming  to^  it  .from  other  minds; 
leadership  depending  upon  the  efficacy  of  a  personal 
impression  to  awaken  feeling,  thought,  action,  and  so 
to  become  a  cause  of  life.  While  there  are  some 
men  who  seem  but  to  add  one  to  the  population, 
there  are  others  whom  we  cannot  help  thinking 
about ;  they  lend  arguments  to  their  neighbors' 
creeds,  so  that  the  life  of  their  contemporaries,  and 

283 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

perhaps  of  following  generations,  is  notably  different 
because  they  have  lived.  The  immediate  reason  for 
this  difference  is  evidently  that  in  the  one  case  there 
is  something  seminal  or  generative  in  the  relation 
between  the  personal  impression  a  man  makes  and 
the  mind  that  receives  it,  which  is  lacking  in  the  other 
case.  If  we  could  go  farther  than  this  and  discover 
Avhat  it  is  that  makes  certain  suggestions  seminal  or 
generative,  we  should  throw  much  light  on  leader- 
ship, and  through  that  on  all  questions  of  social 
tendency. 

We  are  born  with  what  may  be  roughly  described 
as  a  vaguely  differentiated  mass  of  mental  tendency, 
vast  and  potent,  but  unformed  and  needing  direction 
— informe,  ingens,  cui  lumen  ademptum.  This  instinc- 
tive material  is  believed  to  be  the  outcome  of  age-long 
social  development  in  the  race,  and  hence  to  be,  in  a 
general  way,  expressive  of  that  development  and  func- 
tional in  its  continuance.  The  process  of  evolution 
has  established  a  probability  that  a  man  will  find 
himself  at  home  in  the  world  into  which  he  comes, 
and  prepared  to  share  in  its  activities.  Besides  the 
tendency  to  various  sorts  of  emotion,  we  have  the 
thinking  instinct,  the  intelligence,  which  seems  to  be 
fairly  distinct  from  emotion  and  whose  function  in- 
cludes the  co-ordination  and  organization  of  other 
instinctive  material  with  reference  to  the  situations 
which  life  offers. 

At  any  particular  stage  of  individual  existence, 
these  elements,  together  with  the  suggestions  from 

284 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

the  world  without,  are  found  more  or  less  per- 
fectly organized  into  a  living,  growing  whole,  a 
person,  a  man.  Obscurely  locked  within  him,  in- 
scrutable to  himself  as  to  others,  is  the  soul  of  the 
whole  past,  his  portion  of  the  energy,  the  passion, 
the  tendency,  of  human  life.  Its  existence  creates  a 
vague  need  to  live,  to  feel,  to  act ;  but  he  cannot  ful- 
fil this  need,  at  least  not  in  a  normal  way,  without 
incitement  from  outside  to  loosen  and  direct  his  in- 
stinctive aptitude.  There  is  explosive  material  stored 
up  in  him,  but  it  cannot  go  off  unless  the  right  spark 
reaches  it,  and  that  spark  is  usually  some  sort  of  a 
personal  suggestion,  some  living  trait  that  sets  life 
free  and  turns  restlessness  into  power. 

It  must  be  evident  that  we  can  look  for  no  cut-and- 
dried  theory  of  this  life-imparting  force,  no  algebraic 
formula  for  leadership.  We  know  but  little  of  the 
depths  of  human  tendency;  and  those  who  know 
most  are  possibly  the  poets,  whose  knowledge  is  little 
available  for  precise  uses.  Moreover,  the  problem 
varies  incalculably  with  sex,  age,  race,  inherited  idio- 
syncrasy, and  previous  personal  development.  The 
general  notions  of  evolution,  however,  lead  us  to 
expect  that  what  awakens  life  and  so  gives  ascendency 
will  be  something  important  or  functional  in  the  past 
life  of  the  race,  something  appealing  to  instincts  which 
have  survived  because  they  had  a  part  to  perform ; 
and  this,  generally  speaking,  appears  to  be  the  case. 

The  prime  condition  of  ascendency  is  the  presence 

285 


THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  undirected  energy  in  the  person  over  whom  it  is  to 
b£  exercised  ;  it  is  not  so  much  forced  upon  us  from 
without  as  demanded  from  within.  The  mind,  hav- 
ing energy,  must  work,  and  requires  a  guide,  a  form 
of  thought,  to  facilitate  its  working.  All  views  of 
life  are  fallacious  which  do  not  recognize  the  fact 
that  the  primary  need  is  the  need  to  do.  Every 
healthy  organism  evolves  energy,  and  this  must  have 
an  outlet.  In  the  human  mind,  during  its  expanding 
period,  the  excess  of  life  takes  the  form  of  a  reaching 
out  beyond  all  present  and  familiar  things  after  an 
unknown  good ;  no  matter  what  the  present  and 
familiar  may  be,  the  fact  that  it  is  such  is  enough  to 
make  it  inadequate.  So  we  have  a  vague  onward 
impulse,  which  is  the  unorganized  material,  the  un- 
differentiated  protoplasm,  so  to  speak,  of  all  prog- 
ress; and  this,  as  we  have  seen,  makes  the  eager- 
ness of  hero-worship  in  the  young,  imaginative  and 
aspiring.  So  long  as  our  minds  and  hearts  are  open 
and  capable  of  progress,  there  are  persons  that  have 
a  glamour  for  us,  of  whom  we  think  with  reverence 
and  aspiration  ;  and  although  the  glamour  may  pass 
from  them  and  leave  them  commonplace,  it  will  have 
fixed  itself  somewhere  else.  In  youth  the  mind, 
eager,  searching,  forward  looking,  stands  at  what 
Professor  Baldwin  calls  the  alter  pole  of  the  socius, 
peering  forth  in  search  of  new  life.  And  the  idealist 
at  any  age  needs  superiority  in  others  and  is  always 
in  quest  of  it.  "  Dear  to  us  are  those  who  love  us, 
.  .  .  but  dearer  are  those  who  reject  us  as  un- 

286 


LEADEKSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

worthy,  for  they  add  another  life;  they  build  a 
heaven  before  us  whereof  we  had  not  dreamed,  and 
thereby  supply  to  us  new  powers  out  of  the  recesses 
of  the  spirit,  and  urge  us  to  new  and  unattempted 
performances."  *  To  cease  to  admire  is  a  proof  of 
deterioration. 

Most  people  will  be  able  to  recall  vague  yet  in- 
tensely vivid  personal  impressions  that  they  have 
received  from  faces — perhaps  from  a  single  glance 
of  a  countenance  that  they  have  never  seen  before 
or  since — or  perhaps  from  a  voice;  and  these  im- 
pressions often  remain  and  grow  and  become  an 
important  factor  in  life.  The  explanation  is  perhaps 
something  like  this:  When  we  receive  these  mys- 
terious influences  we  are  usually  in  a  peculiarly  im- 
pressionable state,  with  nervous  energy  itching  to  be 
worked  off.  There  is  pressure  in  the  obscure  reser- 
voirs of  hereditary  passion.  In  some  way,  which  we 
can  hardly  expect  to  define,  this  energy  is  tapped,  an 
instinct  is  disengaged,  the  personal  suggestion  con- 
veyed in  the  glance  is  felt  as  the  symbol,  the  master- 
key  that  can  unlock  hidden  tendency.  It  is  much 
the  same  as  when  electricity  stored  and  inert  in  a  jar  is 
loosed  by  a  chance  contact  of  wires  that  completes 
the  circuit ;  the  mind  holds  fast  the  life-imparting 
suggestion ;  cannot,  in  fact,  let  go  of  it. 

" all  night  long  his  face  before  her  lived, 

Dark-splendid,  speaking  in  the  silence,  full 
Of  noble  things,  and  held  her  from  her  sleep." 

*  Emerson,  New  England  Reformers. 

287 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  is  true  of  races,  as  of  individuals,  that  the  more 
vitality  and  onwardness  they  have,  the  more  they 
need  ideals  and  a  leadership  that  gives  form  to  them. 
A  strenuous  people  like  the  Anglo-Saxon  must  have 
something  to  look  forward  and  up  to,  since  without 
faith  of  some  sort  they  must  fall  into  dissipation  or 
despair;  they  can  never  be  content  with  that  calm 
and  symmetrical  enjoyment  of  the  present  which  is 
thought  to  have  been  characteristic  of  the  ancient 
Greeks.  To  be  sure  it  is  said,  and  no  doubt  with 
truth,  that  the  people  of  Northern  Europe  are  less 
hero-worshippers  than  those  of  the  South,  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  less  given  to  blind  enthusiasm  for 
popular  idols ;  but  this,  I  take  it,  only  means  that 
the  former,  having  more  constructive  power  in  build- 
ing up  ideals  from  various  personal  sources,  and  more 
persistence  in  adhering  to  them  when  thus  built  up, 
are  more  sober  and  independent  in  their  judgment  of 
particular  persons,  and  less  liable  to  extravagant  ad- 
miration of  the  hero  of  the  moment.  But  their  ideal- 
ism is  all  the  more  potent  for  this,  and  at  bottom  is 
just  as  dependent  upon  personal  suggestion  for  its 
definition.  Thus  it  is  likely  that  all  leadership  will 
be  found  to  be  such  by  virtue  of  defining  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  mind.  "  If  we  survey  the  field  of 
history,"  says  Professor  William  James,  "  and  ask 
what  feature  all  great  periods  of  revival,  of  expansion 
of  the  human  mind,  display  in  common,  we  shall 
find,  I  think,  simply  this ;  that  each  and  all  of  them 
have  said  to  the  human  being,  '  the  inmost  nature  of 

288 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

the  reality  is  congenial  to  powers  which  you  pos- 
sess '  " ;  *  and  the  same  principle  evidently  applies 
to  personal  leadership. 

We  are  born  to  action  ;  and  whatever  is  capable  of 
suggesting  and  guiding  action  has  power  over  us  from 
the  first.  The  attention  of  the  new-born  child  is 
fixed  by  whatever  exercises  the  senses,  through  motion, 
noise,  touch,  or  color.  Persons  and  animals  interest 
him  primarily  because  they  offer  a  greater  amount 
and  variety  of  sensible  stimulus  than  other  objects. 
They  move,  talk,  laugh,  coax,  fondle,  bring  food  and 
so  on.  The  prestige  they  thus  acquire  over  the 
child's  mind  is  shared  with  such  other  stimulating 
phenomena  as  cars,  engines,  windmills,  patches  of 
sunlight  and  bright-colored  garments.  A  little  later, 
when  he  begins  to  acquire  some  control  over  his 
activities,  he  welcomes  eagerly  whatever  can  partici- 
pate in  and  so  stimulate  and  guide  them.  The 
playthings  he  cares  for  are  those  that  go,  or  that  he 
can  do  something  with — carts,  fire-engines,  blocks, 
and  the  like.  Persons,  especially  those  that  share  his 
interests,  maintain  and  increase  their  ascendency,  and 
other  children,  preferably  a  little  older  and  of  more 
varied  resources  than  himself,  are  particularly  wel- 
come. Among  grown-ups  he  admires  most  those  who 
do  something  that  he  can  understand,  whom  he  can 
appreciate  as  actors  and  producers — such  as  the  car- 
penter, the  gardener,  the  maid  in  the  kitchen.  B. 
invented  the  happy  word  "  thinger  "  to  describe  this 

*  Psychology,  voL  ii.,  p.  314. 
289 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

sort  of  people,  and  while  performing  similar  feats 
would  proudly  proclaim  himself  a  thinger. 

It  will  be  observed  that  at  this  stage  a  child  has 
learned  to  reflect  upon  action  and  to  discriminate 
that  which  is  purposeful  and  effective  from  mere 
motion ;  he  has  gained  the  notion  of  power.  Himself 
constantly  trying  to  do  things,  he  learns  to  admire 
those  who  can  do  things  better  than  himself,  or  who 
can  suggest  new  things  to  do.  His  father  sitting  at 
his  desk  probably  seems  an  inert  and  unattractive 
phenomenon,  but  the  man  who  can  make  shavings  or 
dig  a  deep  hole  is  a  hero ;  and  the  seemingly  per- 
verse admiration  which  children  at  a  later  age  show 
for  circus  men  and  for  the  pirates  and  desperadoes 
they  read  about,  is  to  be  explained  in  a  similar  man- 
ner. What  they  want  is  evident  power.  The  scholar 
may  possibly  be  as  worthy  of  admiration  as  the  acro- 
bat or  the  policeman ;  but  the  boy  of  ten  will  seldom 
see  the  matter  in  that  light. 

Thus  the  idea  of  power  and  the  types  of  personality 
which,  as  standing  for  that  idea,  have  ascendency  over 
us,  are  a  function  of  our  own  changing  character. 
At  one  stage  of  their  growth  nearly  all  imaginative 
boys  look  upon  some  famous  soldier  as  the  ideal  man. 
He  holds  this  place  as  symbol  and  focus  for  the 
aggressive,  contending,  dominating  impulses  of  vigor- 
ous boyhood  ;  to  admire  and  sympathize  with  him  is 
to  gratify,  imaginatively,  these  impulses.  In  this 
country  some  notable  speaker  and  party  leader  often 
succeeds  the  soldier  as  a  boyish  ideal ;  his  career  is 

290 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

almost  equally  dominating  and  splendid,  and,  in  time 
of  peace,  not  quite  so  remote  from  reasonable  aspira- 
tion. In  later  life  these  simple  ideals  are  likely  to 
yield  somewhat  to  others  of  a  more  special  character, 
depending  upon  the  particular  pursuit  into  which 
one's  energies  are  directed.  Every  occupation  which 
is  followed  with  enthusiasm  has  its  heroes,  men  who 
stand  for  the  idea  of  power  or  efficient  action  as 
understood  by  persons  of  a  particular  training  and 
habit.  The  world  of  commerce  and  industry  is 
full  of  hero-worship,  and  men  who  have  made  great 
fortunes  are  admired,  not  unjustly,  for  the  personal 
prowess  such  success  implies ;  while  people  of  a 
finer  intellectual  development  have  their  notion  of 
power  correspondingly  refined,  and  to  them  the 
artist,  the  poet,  the  man  of  science,  the  philanthropist, 
may  stand  for  the  highest  sort  of  successful  action. 

It  should  be  observed,  however,  that  the  simpler 
and  more  dramatic  or  visually  imaginable  kinds  of 
power  have  a  permanent  advantage  as  regards  general 
ascendency.  Only  a  few  can  appreciate  the  power  of 
Darwin,  and  those  few  only  when  the  higher  faculties 
of  their  minds  are  fully  awake;  there  is  nothing 
dramatic,  nothing  appealing  to  the  visual  imagina- 
tion, in  his  secluded  career.  But  we  can  all  see  Grant 
or  Nelson  or  Moltke  at  the  head-quarters  of  their 
armies,  or  on  the  decks  of  their  ships,  and  hear  the 
roar  of  their  cannons.  They  hold  one  by  the  eye 
and  by  the  swelling  of  an  emotion  felt  to  be  common 
to  a  vast  multitude  of  people.  There  is  always  sorne- 

291 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

thing  of  the  intoxication  of  the  crowd  in  the  submis- 
sion to  this  sort  of  ascendency.  However  alone  our 
bodies  may  be,  our  imaginations  are  in  the  throng  ; 
and  for  my  part  whenever  I  think  of  any  occasion  when 
a  man  played  a  great  part  before  the  eyes  of  mankind, 
I  feel  a  thrill  of  irrational  enthusiasm.  I  should 
imagine,  for  instance,  that  scarcely  anyone  could  read 
such  a  thing  as  "  Sheridan's  Ride "  without  strong 
feeling.  He  witnesses  the  disorder,  uncertainty,  and 
dismay  of  the  losing  battle,  the  anxious  officers  trying 
to  stay  the  retreat,  and  longing  for  the  commander 
who  has  always  led  to  victory.  Then  he  follows  the 
ride  from  "Winchester  twenty  miles  away,"  and 
shares  the  enthusiasm  of  the  army  when  the  valiant 
and  beloved  leader  rides  forth  upon  the  field  at  last, 
rene wing  every  heart  by  his  presence  and  making 
victory  out  of  defeat.  In  comparison  with  this  other 
kinds  of  power  seem  obscure  and  separate.  It  is  the 
drama  of  visible  courage,  danger,  and  success,  and 
the  sense  of  being  one  of  a  throng  to  behold  it,  that 
makes  the  difference. 

This  need  of  a  dramatic  or  visually  imaginable 
presentation  of  power  is  no  doubt  more  imperative  in 
the  childlike  peoples  of  Southern  Europe  than  it  is 
in  the  sedater  and  more  abstractly  imaginative  Teu- 
tons ;  but  it  is  strong  in  every  people,  and  is  shared 
by  the  most  intellectual  classes  in  their  emotional 
moods.  Consequently  these  heroes  of  the  popular 
imagination,  especially  those  of  war,  are  enabled  to 
serve  as  the  instigators  of  a  common  emotion  in 

292 


great  masses  of  people,  and  thus  to  produce  in  large 
groups  a  sense  of  comradeship  and  solidarity.  The 
admiration  and  worship  of  such  heroes  is  probably 
the  chief  feeling  that  people  have  in  common  in  all 
early  stages  of  civilization,  and  the  main  bond  of 
social  groups.  Even  in  our  own  time  this  is  more 
the  case  than  is  understood.  It  was  easy  to  see,  dur- 
ing the  Spanish- American  War,  that  the  eager  interest 
of  the  whole  American  people  in  the  military  opera- 
tions, and  the  general  and  enthusiastic  admiration  of 
every  trait  of  heroism,  was  bringing  about  a  fresh 
sense  of  community  throughout  the  country  and  so 
renewing  and  consolidating  the  collective  life  of  the 
nation. 

If  we  ask  what  are  the  mental  traits  that  distinguish 
a  leader,  the  only  answer  seems  to  be  that  he  must,  in 
one  way  or  another,  be  a  great  deal  of  a  man,  or  at 
least  appear  to  be.  He  must  stand  for  something  to 
which  men  incline,  and  so  take  his  place  by  right  as 
a  focus  of  their  thought. 

Evidently  he  must  be  the  best  of  his  kind  avail- 
able. It  is  impossible  that  he  should  stand  forth  as 
an  archetype,  unless  he  is  conceived  as  superior,  in 
some  respect,  to  all  others  within  range  of  the  imagina- 
tion. Nothing  that  is  seen  to  be  second-rate  can  be 
an  ideal ;  if  a  character  does  not  bound  the  horizon 
at  some  point  we  will  look  over  it  to  what  we  can  see 
beyond.  The  object  of  admiration  may  be  Caesar 
Borgia,  or  Napoleon,  or  Jesse  James  the  train-robber, 

293 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

but  he  must  be  typical,  must  stand  for  something. 
No  matter  how  bad  the  leader  may  be,  he  will  always 
be  found  to  owe  his  leadership  to  something  strong^ 
affirmative,  and  superior,  something  that  appeals  to 
onward  instinct. 

To  be  a  great  deal  of  a  man,  and  hence  a  leader, 
involves,  on  the  one  hand,  a  significant  individuality, 
and,  on  the  other,  breadth  of  sympathy,  the  two  being 
different  phases  of  personal  calibre,  rather  than  sep- 
arate traits. 

It  is  because  a  man  cannot  stand  for  anything  ex- 
cept as  he  has  a  significant  individuality,  that  self- 
reliance  is  so  essential  a  trait  in  leadership :  except  as 
a  person  trusts  and  cherishes  his  own  special  ten- 
dency, different  from  that  of  other  people  and  usually 
opposed  by  them  in  its  inception,  he  can  never  de- 
velop anything  of  peculiar  value.  He  has  to  free 
himself  from  the  domination  of  purposes  already  de- 
fined and  urged  upon  him  by  others,  and  bring  up 
something  fresh  out  of  the  vague  under-world  of 
subconsciousness ;  and  this  means  an  intense  self,  a 
militant,  gloating  "I."  Emerson's  essay  on  self- 
reliance  only  formulates  what  has  always  been  the 
creed  of  significant  persons. 

On  the  other  hand,  success  in  unfolding  a  special 
tendency  and  giving  vogue  to  it,  depends  upon  being 
in  touch,  through  sympathy,  with  the  current  of 
human  life.  All  leadership  takes  place  through  the 
communication  of  ideas  to  the  minds  of  others,  and 
unless  the  ideas  are  so  presented  as  to  be  congenial 

294 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

to  those  other  minds,  they  will  evidently  be  rejected. 
It  is  because  the  novelty  is  not  alien  to  us,  but  is 
seen  to  be  ourself  in  a  fresh  guise,  that  we  wel- 
come it. 

It  has  frequently  been  noticed  that  personal  ascend- 
ency is  not  necessarily  dependent  upon  any  palpable 
deed  in  which  power  is  manifested,  but  that  there  is 
often  a  conviction  of  power  and  an  expectation  of 
success  that  go  before  the  deed  and  control  the  minds 
of  men  without  apparent  reason.  There  is  something 
fascinating  about  this  immediate  and  seemingly 
causeless  personal  efficacy,  and  many  writers  of  in- 
sight lay  great  stress  upon  it.  Emerson,  for  exam- 
ple, is  fond  of  pointing  out  that  the  highest  sort  of 
greatness  is  self-evident,  without  particular  works. 
Most  men  of  executive  force  possess  something  of 
this  direct  ascendency,  and  some,  like  Napoleon, 
Cromwell,  Bismarck,  and  Andrew  Jackson,  have  had 
it  in  pre-eminent  measure.  It  is  not  confined  to  any 
class,  however,  but  exists  in  an  infinite  variety  of 
kinds  and  degrees ;  and  men  of  thought  may  have  it 
as  well  as  men  of  action.  Dante,  Milton,  Goethe,  and 
their  like,  bear  the  authority  to  dominate  the  minds 
of  others  like  a  visible  mantle  upon  their  shoulders, 
inspiring  a  sense  of  reverence  and  a  tendency  to 
believe  and  follow  in  all  the  impressionable  people 
they  meet.  Such  men  are  only  striking  examples  of 
what  we  are  all  familiar  with  in  daily  life,  most  per- 
sons of  decided  character  having  something  imposing 
about  them  at  times.  Indeed,  there  is  hardly  any- 

295 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

one  so  insignificant  that  lie  does  not  seem  imposing 
to  someone  at  some  time. 

Notwithstanding  the  mystery  that  is  often  made  of 
this,  it  appears  to  be  simply  a  matter  of  impulsive 
personal  judgment,  an  impression  of  power  and  a 
sense  of  yielding  due  to  interpretation  of  the  visible 
or  audible  symbols  of  personality,  discussed  in  a 
previous  chapter.  Another  may  impress  us  with 
his  power,  and  so  exercise  ascendency  over  us,  either 
by  grossly  performing  the  act,  or  by  exhibiting 
traits  of  personality  which  convince  our  imaginations 
that  he  can  and  will  do  the  act  if  he  wishes  to.  It 
is  in  this  latter  way,  through  imaginative  inference, 
that  people  mostly  work  upon  us  in  ordinary  social 
intercourse.  It  would  puzzle  us,  in  many  cases,  to 
tell  just  how  we  know  that  a  man  is  determined, 
dauntless,  magnanimous,  intrinsically  powerful,  or 
the  reverse.  Of  course  reputation  and  past  record 
count  for  much  ;  but  we  judge  readily  enough  with- 
out them,  and  if,  like  Orlando  in  "  As  You  Like  It," 
he  "  looks  successfully,"  we  believe  in  him.  The  im- 
agination is  a  sort  of  clearing-house  through  which 
great  forces  operate  by  convenient  symbols  and  with 
a  minimum  of  trouble. 

The  man  of  action  who,  like  Napoleon,  can  domi- 
nate the  minds  of  others  in  a  crisis,  must  have  the 
general  traits  of  leadership  developed  with  special 
reference  to  the  promptness  of  their  action.  His  in- 
dividual significance  must  take  the  form  of  a  palpable 
decision  and  self-confidence ;  and  breadth  of  sym- 

296 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

pathy  becomes  a  quick  tact  to  grasp  the  mental  state 
of  those  with  whom  he  deals,  so  that  he  may  know 
how  to  plant  the  dominating  suggestion.  Into  the 
vagueness  and  confusion  that  most  of  us  feel  in  the 
face  of  a  strange  situation,  such  a  man  injects  a  clear- 
cut  idea.  There  is  a  definiteness  about  him  which 
makes  us  feel  that  he  will  not  leave  us  drifting,  but 
will  set  a  course,  will  substitute  action  for  doubt,  and 
give  our  energies  an  outlet.  Again,  his  aggressive 
confidence  is  transmitted  by  suggestion,  and  acts 
directly  upon  our  minds  as  a  sanction  of  his  leader- 
ship. And  if  he  adds  to  this  the  tact  to  awaken  no 
opposition,  to  make  us  feel  that  he  is  of  our  sort,  that 
his  suggestions  are  quite  in  our  line,  in  a  word  that 
we  are  safe  in  his  hands ;  he  can  hardly  be  resisted. 

In  face-to-face  relations,  then,  the  natural  leader  is 
one  who  always  has  the  appearance  of  being  master 
of  the  situation.  He  includes  other  people  and  ex- 
tends beyond  them,  and  so  is  in  a  position  to  point 
out  what  they  must  do  next.  Intellectually  his  sug- 
gestion seems  to  embrace  what  is  best  in  the  views  of 
others,  and  to  embody  the  inevitable  conclusion ;  it 
is  the  timely,  the  fit,  and  so  the  prevalent.  Emotion- 
ally his  belief  is  the  strongest  force  present,  and  so 
draws  other  beliefs  into  it.  Yet,  while  he  imposes 
himself  upon  others,  he  feels  the  other  selves  as  part 
of  the  situation,  and  so  adapts  himself  to  them  that 
no  opposition  is  awakened ;  or  possibly  he  may  take 
the  violent  method,  and  browbeat  and  humiliate  a 
weak  mind :  there  are  various  ways  of  establishing 

297 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

superiority,  but  in  one  way  or  another  the  consum- 
mate leader  always  accomplishes  it. 

Take  Bismarck  as  an  example  of  almost  irresistible 
personal  ascendency  in  face-to-face  relations.  He 
had  the  advantage,  which,  however,  many  men  of 
equal  power  have  done  without,  of  an  imposing  bulk 
and  stature ;  but  much  more  than  this  were  the  mental 
and  moral  traits  which  made  him  appear  the  natural 
master  in  an  assembly  of  the  chief  diplomats  of  Europe. 
"No  idea  can  be  formed,"  says  M.  de  Blowitz,* 
"  of  the  ascendency  exercised  by  the  German  Chan- 
cellor over  the  eminent  diplomatists  attending  the 
Congress.  Prince  Gortchakoff  alone,  eclipsed  by  his 
rival's  greatness,  tried  to  struggle  against  him."  His 
"great  and  scornful  pride,"  the  absolute,  contempt- 
uous assurance  of  superiority  which  was  evident  in 
every  pose,  tone,  and  gesture,  accompanied,  as  is  pos- 
sible only  to  one  perfectly  sure  of  himself,  by  a 
frankness,  good-humor,  and  cordial  insight  into  others 
which  seemed  to  make  them  one  with  himself,  par- 
ticipators in  his  domination ;  together  with  a  pene- 
trating intelligence,  a  unique  and  striking  way  of 
expressing  himself,  and  a  perfect  clearness  of  pur- 
pose at  all  times,  were  among  the  elements  of  the 
effect  he  produced.  He  conciliated  those  whom  he 
thought  it  worth  while  to  conciliate,  and  browbeat, 
ignored,  or  ridiculed  the  rest.  There  was  nothing  a 
rival  could  say  or  do  but  Bismarck,  if  he  chose,  would 
say  or  do  something  which  made  it  appear  a  failure. 

*  In  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  78,  p.  870. 
298 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

General  Grant  was  a  man  whose  personal  presence 
had  none  of  the  splendor  of  Prince  Bismarck,  and 
who  even  appeared  insignificant  to  the  undiscerning. 
It  is  related  that  when  he  went  to  take  command  of 
his  first  regiment  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  officer  whom  he  was  to  succeed  paid  no  at- 
tention to  him  at  first,  and  would  not  believe  that  he 
was  Grant  until  he  showed  his  papers.  An  early 
acquaintance  said  of  him,  "  He  hadn't  the  push  of  a 
business  man."  "He  was  always  a  gentleman,  and 
everybody  loved  him,  for  he  was  so  gentle  and  con- 
siderate ;  but  we  didn't  see  what  he  could  do  in  the 
world."  *  Yet  over  the  finer  sort  of  men  he  exercised 
a  great  ascendency,  and  no  commander  was  more  will- 
ingty  obeyed  by  his  subordinates,  or  inspired  more 
general  confidence.  In  his  way  he  manifested  the 
essential  traits  of  decision,  self-confidence,  and  tact 
in  great  measure.  He  never  appeared  dubious,  ner- 
vous, or  unsettled ;  and  though  he  often  talked  over 
his  plans  with  trusted  officers,  he  only  once,  I  be- 
lieve, summoned  a  council  of  war,  and  then  rejected 
its  decision.  He  was  nearly  or  quite  alone  in  his 
faith  in  the  plan  by  which  Vicksburg  was  taken,  and 
it  is  well  known  that  General  Sherman,  convinced 
that  it  would  fail,  addressed  him  a  formal  remon- 
strance, which  Grant  quietly  put  in  his  pocket  and 
later  returned  to  its  author.  "  His  pride  in  his  own 
mature  opinion,"  says  General  Schofield,  "  was  very 

*  Reminiscences   quoted   by   Garland    in    McClure's    Magazine, 
April,  1897. 

299 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

great ;  in  that  he  was  as  far  as  possible  from  being  a 
modest  man.  This  absolute  confidence  in  his  own 
judgment  upon  any  subject  he  had  mastered,  and  the 
moral  courage  to  take  upon  himself  alone  the  highest 
responsibility,  and  to  demand  full  authority  and  free- 
dom to  act  according  to  his  own  judgment,  without 
interference  from  anybody,  added  to  his  accurate 
estimate  of  his  own  ability,  and  his  clear  perception 
of  the  necessity  for  undivided  authority  and  respon- 
sibility in  the  conduct  of  military  operations,  and  in 
all  that  concerns  the  efficiency  of  armies  in  time  of 
war,  constituted  the  foundation  of  that  very  great 
character."*  He  was  also  a  man  of  great  tact  and 
insight.  He  always  felt  the  personal  situation ;  di- 
vining the  character  and  aims  of  his  antagonists,  and 
making  his  own  officers  feel  that  he  understood  them 
and  appreciated  whatever  in  them  was  worthy. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  a  boastful  spirit  is  attrib- 
uted to  Americans,  the  complete  renunciation  of  ex- 
ternal display  so  noticeable  in  General  Grant  is  con- 
genial to  the  American  mind,  and  characteristic  of  a 
large  proportion  of  our  most  successful  and  admired 
men.  Undoubtedly  our  typical  hero  is  the  man  who 
is  capable  of  anything,  but  thinks  it  unbecoming  to 
obtrude  the  fact.  Possibly  it  is  our  self-reliant,  dem- 
ocratic mode  of  life,  which,  since  it  offers  a  constant 
and  varied  test  of  the  realities,  as  distinct  from  the 
appearances,  gives  rise  to  a  contempt  of  the  latter, 

*  From  a  letter  published  in  the  newspapers  at  the  time  of  the 
dedication  of  the  Grant  Monument,  in  April,  1897. 

300 


LEADEKSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

and  of  those  arts  of  pretence  which  impose  upon  a 
less  sophisticated  people.  The  truth  about  us  is  so 
accessible  that  cant  becomes  comparatively  transpar- 
ent and  ridiculous.* 

There  is  no  better  phenomenon  in  which  to  ob- 
serve personal  ascendency  than  public  speaking. 
When  a  man  takes  the  floor  in  an  assembly,  all  eyes 
are  fixed  upon  him,  all  imaginations  set  to  work  to 
divine  his  personality  and  significance.  If  he  looks 
like  a  true  and  steadfast  man,  of  a  spirit  kindred 
with  our  own,  we  incline  to  him  before  he  speaks, 
and  believe  that  what  he  says  will  be  congenial  and 
right.  We  have  all,  probably,  seen  one  arise  in  the 
midst  of  an  audience  strange  to  him,  and  by  his  mere 
attitude  and  expression  of  countenance  create  a  subtle 
sense  of  community  and  expectation  of  consent.  An- 
other, on  the  contrary,  will  at  once  impress  us  as  self- 
conceited,  insincere,  over-excited,  cold,  narrow,  or  in 
some  other  way  out  of  touch  with  us,  and  not  likely  to 
say  anything  that  will  suit  us.  As  our  first  speaker 
proceeds,  he  continues  to  create  a  sense  that  he  feels 
the  situation ;  we  are  at  home  and  comfortable  with 
him,  because  he  seems  to  be  of  our  sort,  having  similar 
views  and  not  likely  to  lead  us  wrong  ;  it  is  like  the 
ease  and  relaxation  that  one  feels  among  old  friends. 
There  can  be  no  perfect  eloquence  that  does  not  cre- 
ate this  sense  of  personal  congeniality.  But  this  def- 

*  Mr.  Howells  remarks  that  "  in  Europe  life  is  histrionic  and  dram- 
atized, and  that  in  America,  except  when  it  is  trying  to  be  European, 
it  is  direct  and  sincere." — "Their  Silver  Wedding  Journey," 
Harper's  Magazine,  September,  1899. 

301 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

erence  to  our  character  and  mood  is  only  the  basis 
for  exerting  power  over  us ;  he  is  what  we  are,  but  is 
much  more ;  is  decided  where  we  were  vacillating, 
clear  where  we  were  vague,  warm  where  we  were 
cold.  He  offers  something  affirmative  and  onward, 
and  gives  it  the  momentum  of  his  own  belief.  A 
man  may  lack  everything  but  tact  and  conviction  and 
still  be  a  forcible  speaker ;  but  without  these  noth- 
ing will  avail.  "  Speak  only  what  you  do  know  and 
believe,  and  are  personally  in  it,  and  are  answerable 
for  every  word."  In  comparison  with  these  traits  of 
mind  and  character,  fluency,  grace,  logical  order,  and 
the  like,  are  merely  the  decorative  surface  of  oratory, 
which  is  well  enough  in  its  subordinate  place,  but  can 
easily  be  dispensed  with.  Bismarck  was  not  the  less 
a  great  orator  because  he  spoke  "  with  difficulty  and 
an  appearance  of  struggle,"  and  Cromwell's  rude  elo- 
quence would  hardly  have  been  improved  by  lessons 
in  elocution. 

Burke  is  an  example  of  a  man  who  appears  to  have 
had  all  the  attributes  of  a  great  speaker  except  tact, 
and  was  conspicuously  contrasted  in  this  respect  with 
Fox,  whose  genial  nature  never  failed  to  keep  touch 
with  the  situation.  A  man  whose  rising  makes  peo- 
ple think  of  going  to  dinner  is  not  distinctively  a 
great  orator,  even  though  his  speeches  are  an  im- 
mortal contribution  to  literature.  The  well-known 
anecdote  of  the  dagger  illustrates  the  unhappy  re- 
sults of  losing  touch  with  the  situation.  In  the 
midst  of  one  of  his  great  discourses  on  the  French 

302 


LEADEESHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

Revolution,  intending  to  impress  upon  his  hearers 
the  bloody  character  of  that  movement,  Burke  drew 
from  his  bosom  a  dagger  and  cast  it  on  the  floor.  It 
so  happened,  however,  that  the  Members  of  Parlia- 
ment present  were  not  just  then  in  the  mood  to  be 
duly  impressed  by  this  exhibition,  which  produced 
only  astonishment  and  ridicule.  Fox  could  never 
have  done  a  thing  of  this  sort.  With  all  Burke's 
greatness,  it  would  seem  that  there  must  have  been 
something  narrow,  strenuous,  and  at  times  even  re- 
pellent, in  his  personality  and  manner,  some  lack  of 
ready  fellow-feeling,  allowing  him  to  lose  that  sense 
of  the  situation  without  which  there  can  hardly  be 
any  face-to-face  ascendency. 

The  ascendency  which  an  author  exercises  over  us 
by  means  of  the  written  page  is  the  same  in  essence 
as  that  of  the  man  of  action  or  the  orator.  The  me- 
dium of  communication  is  different ;  visible  or  audi- 
ble traits  give  place  to  subtler  indications.  There  is 
also  more  time  for  reflection,  and  reader  or  writer  can 
choose  the  mood  most  fit  to  exert  power  or  to  feel  it ; 
so  that  there  is  no  need  for  that  constant  prepared- 
ness and  aggressiveness  of  voice  and  manner  which 
the  man  of  action  requires.  But  these  are,  after  all, 
incidental  differences;  and  the  underlying  traits  of 
personality,  the  essential  relationship  between  leader 
and  follower,  are  much  the  same  as  in  the  other  cases. 
The  reader  should  feel  that  the  author's  mind  and 
purpose  are  congenial  with  his  own,  though  in  the 
present  direction  they  go  farther,  that  the  thought 

303 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

communicated  is  not  at  all  alien,  but  so  truly  his  that 
it  offers  an  opportunity  to  expand  to  a  wider  circle, 
and  become  a  completer  edition  of  himself.  In  short, 
if  an  author  is  to  establish  and  maintain  the  power 
to  interest  us  and,  in  his  province,  to  lead  our 
thought,  he  must  exhibit  personal  significance  and 
tact,  in  a  form  appropriate  to  this  mode  of  expres- 
sion. He  must  have  a  humanity  so  broad  that,  in 
certain  of  our  moods  at  least,  it  gives  a  sense  of  con- 
geniality and  at-homeness.  He  must  also  make  a 
novel  and  characteristic  impression  of  some  sort,  a 
fresh  and  authentic  contribution  to  our  life;  and 
must,  moreover,  be  wholly  himself,  "  stand  united 
with  his  thought,"  have  that  "  truth  to  its  type  of  the 
given  force "  of  which  Walter  Pater  speaks.  He 
must  possess  belief  in  something,  and  simplicity  and 
boldness  in  expressing  it. 

Take  Darwin  again  for  example,  all  the  better  be- 
cause it  is  sometimes  imagined  that  personality  is 
unimportant  in  scientific  writing.  Probably  few 
thoughtful  and  open-minded  persons  can  read  the 
"  Origin  of  Species  "  without  becoming  Darwinists, 
yielding  willingly,  for  the  time  at  least,  to  his  ascend- 
ency, and  feeling  him  as  a  master.  If  we  consider 
the  traits  that  give  him  this  authority,  it  will  be  found 
that  they  are  of  the  same  general  nature  as  those 
already  pointed  out.  As  we  read  his  chapters,  and 
begin  to  build  him  up  in  our  imaginations  out  of  the 
subtle  suggestions  of  style,  we  find  ourselves  think- 
ing of  him  as,  first  of  all,  a  true  and  simple  man, 

304 


LEADEESHIP  OE  PEESONAL  ASCENDENCY 

a  patient,  sagacious  seeker  after  the  real.  This 
makes  us,  so  far  as  we  are  also  simple  seekers  after 
the  real,  feel  at  home  with  him,  forget  suspicion,  and 
incline  to  believe  as  he  believes,  even  if  we  fail  to  un- 
derstand his  reasons — though  no  man  leaves  us  less 
excuse  for  such  failure.  His  aim  is  our  aim — the 
truth,  and  as  he  is  far  more  competent  to  achieve  it 
in  this  field  than  we  are,  both  because  of  natural 
aptitude  and  a  lifetime  of  special  research,  we  readily 
yield  him  the  reins,  the  more  so  because  he  never 
for  an  instant  demands  it,  but  seems  to  appeal  solely 
to  facts. 

How  many  writers  are  there,  even  of  much  ability, 
who  fail,  primarily  and  irretrievably,  because  they 
do  not  make  this  favorable  personal  impression; 
because  we  divine  something  insincere,  something  im- 
patient, some  private  aim  that  is  not  truth,  which 
keeps  us  uncomfortably  on  our  guard  and  makes  us 
reluctant  to  follow  them  even  when  they  appear  most 
incontrovertible.  Mr.  Huxley  suggested  that  Darwin 
harmed  his  case  by  excessive  and  unnecessary  defer- 
ence to  the  suggestions  of  his  opponents  ;  but  it  may 
well  be  that  in  the  long  run,  and  with  the  highest  tri- 
bunal, this  trait  has  added  to  his  power.  Many  men 
have  been  convinced  by  the  character  of  Darwin,  by 
his  obvious  disinterestedness  and  lack  of  all  contro- 
versial bias,  who  would  never  have  followed  Huxley. 
I  have  had  occasion  to  notice  that  there  is  no  way  of 
making  converts  to  the  idea  of  evolution  so  effectual 
as  to  set  people  reading  the  "Origin  of  Species." 

305 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Spencerism  comes  and  goes,  but  Darwinism  is  an 
abiding  condition. 

Darwin's  intellectual  significance  no  one  will  ques- 
tion ;  and  his  self-confidence  or  faith  was  equally 
remarkable,  and  not  at  all  inconsistent  with  his 
modesty.  In  his  case  it  seems  a  faith  in  truth  it- 
self, so  wholly  is  the  self  we  find  in  his  books  identi- 
fied with  the  striving  after  truth.  As  an  act  of  faith 
his  twenty  years  of  collecting  and  brooding  over  the 
facts  bearing  upon  the  principle  he  had  divined,  was  an 
exploit  of  the  same  nature  as  that  of  Columbus,  sail- 
ing westward  for  months  into  an  unknown  ocean, 
to  a  goal  which  no  one  else  could  see.  And  with 
what  simple  confidence  does  he  take  his  stand  upon 
the  truth  thus  won,  and  apply  it  to  the  geological  his- 
tory of  the  globe,  or  the  rise  of  the  human  body  and 
mind.  A  good  illustration  of  his  faith  is  his  assertion, 
in  the  face  of  ridicule,  that  the  existence  of  an  orchid 
with  a  narrow  neck  eleven  inches  long  proved  the 
existence  of  a  moth  with  a  tongue  of  equal  length. 
The  moth,  at  that  time  unknown,  was  subsequently 
discovered.* 

To  illustrate  the  same  principles  in  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent phase  of  thought,  we  might  take  Charles  Lamb. 
Lamb,  too,  attracts  us  first  of  all  by  a  human  and 
congenial  personality.  We  feel  that  in  the  kinds  of 
sentiment  with  which  he  deals  he  is  at  home  and 
adequate,  is  ourselves  and  more  than  we,  with  a 
deeper  pathos,  a  richer,  more  audacious  humor,  a 

*  Related  by  W.  H.  Gibson,  in  Harper's  Magazine  for  May,  1897. 

306 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

truer  sensibility.  He,  too,  enlarges  life  by  access  to 
novel  and  acceptable  modes  of  being ;  and  he  is  al- 
ways boldly  and  simply  himself.  It  is  a  poor  notion 
of  Lamb  that  does  not  recognize  that  he  was,  in  his 
way,  a  man  of  character,  conviction,  and  faith. 

A  similar  analysis  might  be  applied  to  great  writers 
of  other  sorts — poets,  historians,  and  moralists  ;  also 
to  painters,  sculptors,  actors,  singers,  to  every  potent 
personality  after  its  kind.  While  there  is  infinite 
variety  in  leadership— according  to  the  characters  of 
the  persons  concerned,  the  points  at  which  they  come 
in  contact,  the  means  of  communication  between 
them,  and  so  on — there  is,  nevertheless,  a  likeness  of 
principle  everywhere  present.  There  is  no  such 
radical  and  complete  divergence  of  the  conditions  of 
power  in  the  various  fields  of  activity  as  is  some- 
times imagined.  While  there  are  great  differences, 
they  may  be  looked  upon  as  specific  rather  than  gen- 
eric. We  may  always  expect  to  find  a  human  nature 
suificiently  broad  and  sound — at  least  in  those  phases 
most  apparent  in  the  special  means  of  expression 
chosen — to  be  felt  as  representative  ;  also  some  time- 
ly contribution  added  to  the  range  of  thought  or 
feeling,  and  faith  in  or  loyalty  to  this  peculiar  con- 
tribution. 

It  is  a  very  natural  result  of  the  principles  already 
noted  that  the  fame  and  power  of  a  man  often  tran- 
scend the  man  himself :  that  is  to  say,  the  personal 

m**~*-'v***™™.*T*v<f~-*'«~''lP*~"'m""*'  '-  -    '  ~~    '' 

idea  associated  by  the  world  with  a  particular  name 

307 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  presence  has  often  little  basis  in  the  mind  be- 
hind that  name  and  presence,  as  it  appears  to  cool 
and  impartial  study.  The  reason  is  that  the  function 
of  the  great  and  famous  man  is  to  be  a  symbol,  and 
the  real  question  in  other  minds  is  not  so  much, 
What  are  you  ?  as,  What  can  I  believe  that  you 
are  ?  What  can  you  help  me  to  feel  and  be  ?  How  far 
can  I  use  you  as  a  symbol  in  the  development  of 
my  instinctive  tendency?  The  scientific  historian 
may  insist  on  asking,  What  are  you  ?  because  the  in- 
stinct he  is  trying  to  gratify  is  the  need  to  make 
things  consistent  to  the  intelligence.  But  few  per- 
sons have  this  need  strongly  developed,  in  compari- 
son with  those  of  a  more  emotional  character ;  and 
so  most  will  care  more  for  the  other  questions.  The 
scientific  point  of  view  can  never  be  that  of  the 
most  of  mankind,  and  science,  it  seems  to  me,  can 
hardly  be  more  than  the  critic  and  chastener  of  pop- 
ular faith,  not  its  leader. 

Thus  we  may  say  of  all  famous  and  admired  char- 
acters that,  as  personal  ideas,  they  partake  of  the  nat- 
ure of  gods,  in  that  the  thought  entertained  of  them 
is  a  constructive  effort  of  the  idealizing  imagination 
seeking  to  create  a  personal  symbol  of  its  own  ten- 
dency. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  striking  illustration  of 
this  than  that  offered  by  the  mediaeval  history  of  the 
papacy.  It  is  notorious  that  the  idea  of  the  pope,  as 
it  was  entertained  by  the  religious  world,  and  the 
pope  himself,  as  he  appeared  to  his  intimates,  were 

308 


LEADERSHIP  OK  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

things  having  for  the  most  part  no  close  relation  to 
each  other.  The  visible  pope  was  often  and  for  long 
periods  at  a  time  a  depraved  or  insignificant  man ; 
but  during  these  very  periods  the  ideal  pope,  the 
pope  of  Europe's  thought,  might  and  often  did  flour- 
ish and  grow  in  temporal  and  spiritual  power.  The 
former  was  only  a  symbol  for  the  better  definition  of 
what  the  world  needed  to  believe,  a  lay  figure  for  gar- 
ments woven  by  the  co-operative  imagination  of  relig- 
ious men.  The  world  needed  to  believe  in  a  spirit- 
ual authority  as  a  young  girl  needs  to  be  in  love,  and 
it  took  up  with  the  papacy  as  the  most  available 
framework  for  that  belief,  just  as  the  young  girl  is 
likely  to  give  her  love  to  the  least  repugnant  of  those 
who  solicit  it.  The  same  is  true  in  a  large  meas- 
ure of  the  other  great  mediaeval  authority,  the  em- 
peror, as  Mr.  Bryce  so  clearly  shows  in  his  history 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire ;  and  it  holds  true  in 
some  degree  of  all  those  clothed  with  royalty  or  other 
great  offices.  Fame  may  or  may  not  represent  what 
men  were  ;  but  it  always ,.  represents  what  humanity 
needs  them  to  have  been. 

It  is  also  true  that  when  there  is  a  real  personal 
superiority,  ascendency  is  seldom  confined  to  the 
traits  in  which  this  is  manifested,  but,  once  estab- 
lished in  regard  to  these  traits,  it  tends  to  envelop 
the  leader  as  a  whole,  and  to  produce  allegiance  to 
him  as  a  concrete  person.  This  comes,  of  course, 
from  the  difficulty  of  breaking  up  and  sifting  that 
which  presents  itself  to  the  senses,  and  through  them 

309 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

to  the  mind,  as  a  single  living  whole.  And  as  the 
faults  and  weaknesses  of  a  great  man  are  commonly 
much  easier  to  imitate  than  his  excellences,  it  often 
happens,  as  in  the  case  of  Michelangelo,  that  the 
former  are  much  more  conspicuous  in  his  followers 
than  the  latter. 

Another  phase  of  the  same  truth  is  t'lie  ascendency 
that  persons_of._belief  and  hope .,  always  exercise  as 
against  those  who  may  be  superior  in  every  other  re- 
spect, but  who  lack  these  traits.  The  onward  and 
aggressive  portion  of  the  world,  the  people  who  do 
things,  the  young  and  all  having  surplus  energy,  need 
to  hope  and  strive  for  an  imaginative  object,  and 
they  will  follow  no  one  who  does  not  encourage  this 
tendency.  The  first  requisite  of  a  leader  is,  not  to 
be  right,  but  to  lead,  to  show  a  way.  The  idealist's 
programme  of  political  or  economic  reform  may  be 
impracticable,  absurd,  demonstrably  ridiculous ;  but 
it  can  never  be  successfully  opposed  merely  by  point- 
ing out  that  this  is  the  case.  A  negative  opposition 
cannot  be  wholly  effectual :  there  must  be  a  compet- 
ing idealism  ;  something  must  be  offered  that  is  not 
only  less  objectionable  but  more  desirable,  that  af- 
fords occupation  to  progressive  instinct.  This  holds 
true,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  teachers.  One  may 
sometimes  observe  two  men  of  whom  one  has  a 
sounder  judgment,  a  clearer  head,  a  more  steadfast 
character,  and  is  more  a  master  of  his  subject,  than 
the  other  ;  yet  is  hopelessly  inferior  in  influence,  be- 

310 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

cause  the  other  has  a  streak  of  contagious  idealism 
which  he  lacks.  One  has  all  the  virtues  except  hope ; 
the  other  has  that  and  all  the  power.  It  has  been 
well  said  that  when  a  man  ceases  to  learn — to  be  open 
and  forward-looking — he  should  also  cease  to  teach. 
It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  illustrations  of  this 
simple  but  important  truth.  All  vigorous  minds,  I 
think,  love  books  and  persons  that  are  mentally  en- 
franchising and  onward-looking,  that  seem  to  over- 
throw the  high  board  fences  of  conventional  thought 
and  show  a  distance  with  purple  hills  ;  while  it  would 
be  possible  to  mention  powerful  minds  that  have 
quickly  lost  influence  by  giving  too  much  the  impres- 
sion of  finality,  as  if  they  thought  their  system  was 
the  last.  They  only  build  another  board  fence  a 
little  beyond  the  old  one.  Perhaps  the  most  admi- 
rable and  original  thing  about  Emerson  is  the  invinci- 
ble openness  and  renewal  that  seem  to  be  in  him,  and 
some  of  us  find  his  best  expression  in  that  address  on 
the  "  Method  of  Nature  "  in  which,  even  more  than 
elsewhere,  he  makes  us  feel  that  what  is  achieved  is 
ever  transitory,  and  that  there  is  everything  to  ex- 
pect from  the  future.  In  like  manner,  to  take  perhaps 
the  most  remarkable  example  of  all,  the  early  Chris- 
tians found  in  their  belief  organized  hope,  in  con- 
trast to  the  organized  ennui  of  the  Roman  system  of 
thought,  and  this,  it  would  seem,  must  have  been  its 
most  direct  and  potent  appeal  to  most  minds.* 

*  The  fact  that  the  Koman  system  meant   organized   ennui  in 
thought,  the  impossibility  of  entertaining  large  and  hopeful  views 

311 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  is  also  because  of  this  ideal  and  imaginative 
character  in  personal  ascendency  that  mystery  enters 
so  largely  into  it.  Our  allegiance  is  accompanied  by 
a  mental  enlargement  and  renewal  through  generative 
suggestions ;  we  are  passing  from  the  familiar  to  the 
strange,  are  being  drawn  we  know  not  whither  by 
forces  never  before  experienced ;  the  very  essence  of 
the  matter  is  novelty,  insecurity,  and  that  excitement 
in  the  presence  of  dim  possibilities  that  constitutes 
mystery. 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  to  one  in  love 
the  beloved  person  appears  as  a  mystery,  envel- 
oped, as  it  were,  in  a  sort  of  purple  cloud.  This  is 
doubtless  because  the  lover  is  undergoing  strange 
alteration  in  his  own  mind ;  fresh  vague  passions  are 
rising  into  consciousness  out  of  the  dark  storehouse 
of  hereditary  instinct ;  he  is  cast  loose  from  his  old 
anchorage  and  does  not  know  whither  he  is  driven. 
The  consequent  feeling  of  a  power  and  a  strangeness 
upon  him  he  associates,  of  course,  with  the  person — 
commonplace  enough,  perhaps,  to  others — who  is  the 
symbol  and  occasion  of  the  experience.  Goethe  seems 
to  mean  something  of  this  sort  when  he  uses  the  ex- 
pression das  ewig  Weibliche  to  suggest  the  general 
mystery  and  allurement  of  new  life. 

And  it  is  much  the  same  no  matter  what  sort  of  as- 

of  life,  is  strikingly  brought  out  by  the  aid  of  contemporary  docu- 
ments in  Dill's  Roman  Society.  Prisoners  of  a  shrinking  system, 
the  later  Romans  had  no  outlook  except  toward  the  past.  Anything 
onward  and  open  in  thought  was  inconceivable  by  them. 

313 


LEADEESHIP  OE  PEESONAL  ASCENDENCY 

ceudency  is  exercised  over  us;  there  is  always  ex- 
citemeut  and  a  feeling  of  newness  and  uncertainty, 
imagination  is  awakened  and  busies  itself  with  the 
fascinating  personality  ;  his  slightest  word  or  action 
is  eagerly  interpreted  and  works  upon  us.  In  short, 
mystery  and  idealism  are  so  inseparable  that  a  sense 
of  power  in  others  seems  to  involve  a  sense  of  their 
inscrutability ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  so  soon  as  a 
person  becomes  plain,  he  ceases  to  stimulate  the  im- 
agination ;  we  have  seen  all  around  him,  so  that  he 
no  longer  appears  an  open  door  to  new  life,  but  has 
begun  to  be  commonplace  and  stale. 

It  is  even  true  that  inscrutability  in  itself,  having 
perhaps  nothing  important  back  of  it,  plays  a  consid- 
erable part  in  personal  ascendency.  The  hero  is 
always  a  product  of  constructive  imagination  ;  and 
just  as  some  imaginative  painters  find  that  the  too 
detailed  observation  of  sensible  objects  cumbers  the 
inner  vision  and  impedes  production,  so  the  hero- 
worshipper  is  likely  at  times  to  reject  altogether  the 
persons  he  knows  in  favor  of  some  sort  of  mask  or  lay 
figure,  whose  very  blankness  or  inertness  insures  to  it 
the  great  advantage  that  it  cannot  actively  repudiate 
the  qualities  attributed  to  it :  it  offers  carte  blanche 
to  the  imagination.  As  already  suggested,  the  vital 
question  in  ascendency  is  not,  primarily,  What  are 
you  ?  but,  What  do  you  enable  me  to  be  ?  What  self- 
developing  ideas  do  you  enable  me  to  form  ?  and  the 
power  of  mere  inscrutability  arises  from  the  fact  that 
it  gives  a  vague  stimulus  to  thought  and  then  leaves 

313 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

it  to  work  out  the  details  to  suit  itself.  To  recur  to 
the  matter  of  falling  in  love:  the  young  girl  who, 
like  Gwendolen  in  "Daniel  Deronda,"  or  Isabel  in  the 
"  Portrait  of  a  Lady,"  fixes  her  passion  upon  some  self- 
contained  and  to  her  inscrutable  person,  in  preference 
to  others  who  are  worthier  but  less  mysterious,  is  a 
common  character  in  life  as  well  as  in  fiction. 

Many  other  illustrations  of  the  same  principle 
might  be  given.  Thus  the  fact,  instances  of  which 
are  collected  by  Mr.  Tylor  in  his  work  on  "  Primitive 
Culture,"  that  the  insane,  the  idiotic,  and  the  epileptic 
are  reverenced  by  primitive  peoples,  may  be  inter- 
preted in  a  similar  manner.*  Those  who  are  mentally 
abnormal  present  in  a  striking  form  the  inscrutable 
in  personality ;  they  seem  to  be  men,  but  are  not  such 
men  as  we ;  our  imaginations  are  alarmed  and  baffled, 
so  that  it  is  not  unnatural  that  before  science  has 
shown  us  definite  relations  between  these  persons  and 
ourselves,  they  should  serve  as  one  of  the  points  about 
which  crystallize  our  imaginations  of  unknown  power. 
In  the  same  way  a  strange  and  somewhat  impassive 
physiognomy  is  often,  perhaps,  an  advantage  to  an 
orator,  or  leader  of  any  sort,  because  it  helps  to  fix 
the  eye  and  fascinate  the  mind.  Such  a  countenance 
as  that  of  Savonarola  may  have  counted  for  much 
toward  the  effect  he  produced.  Another  instance  of 
the  prestige  of  the  inscrutable  is  the  fascination  of 
silence,  when  power  is  imagined  to  lie  behind  it.  The 
very  name  of  William  the  Silent  gives  one  a  sort  of 

*  See  Primitive  Culture,  by  E.  B.  Tylor,  chap.  xiv. 
314 


LEADEKSHIP  OK  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

thrill,  whether  he  knows  anything  of  that  distin- 
guished character  or  not.  One  seems  to  see  a  man 
darkly  potent,  mysteriously  dispensing  with  the  ordi- 
nary channel  of  self-assertion,  and  attaining  his  ends 
without  evident  means.  It  is  the  same  with  Von 
Moltke,  "silent  in  seven  languages,"  whose  genius 
humbled  France  and  Austria  in  two  brief  campaigns. 
And  General  Grant's  taciturnity  undoubtedly  fasci- 
nated the  imagination  of  the  people — after  his  earlier 
successes  had  shown  that  there  was  really  something 
in  him — and  helped  to  secure  to  him  a  trust  and  au- 
thority much  beyond  that  of  any  other  of  the  Federal 
generals.  It  is  the  same  with  personal  reserve  in 
every  form  :  one  who  always  appears  to  be  his  own 
master  and  does  not  too  readily  reveal  his  deeper 
feelings,  is  so  much  the  more  likely  to  create  an  im- 
pression of  power.  He  is  formidable  because  incal- 
culable. And  accordingly  we  see  that  many  people 
deliberately  assume,  or  try  to  assume,  an  appearance 
of  inscrutability, 

"  And  do  a  wilful  stillness  entertain, 
With  purpose  to  be  dressed  in  an  opinion 
Of  wisdom,  gravity,  profound  conceit  ;" 

Disraeli,  it  is  said,  "  was  a  mystery  man  by  instinct 
and  policy,"  and  we  all  know  others  in  our  own  circle 
of  acquaintances. 

So  with  the  expression  of  personality  in  literature. 
A  book  which  is  perfectly  clear  at  the  first  cursory 
reading  is  by  that  fact  condemned  as  commonplace. 

315 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

If  there  were  anything  vital  in  it,  it  would  appear  at 
least  a  little  strange,  and  would  not  be  fully  under- 
stood until  it  had  been  for  some  time  inwardly  di- 
gested. At  the  end  of  that  time  it  would  have  done 
its  best  service  for  us  and  its  ascendency  would  have 
waned.  It  is  always  thus,  I  imagine,  with  writers 
who  strongly  move  us ;  there  is  first  mystery  and  a 
sense  of  unexplored  life,  then  a  period  of  assimilative 
excitement,  and  after  that  chastened  affection,  or  per- 
haps revulsion  or  distrust.  A  person  of  mature  years 
and  ripe  development,  who  is  expecting  nothing  from 
literature  but  the  corroboration  and  renewal  of  past 
ideas,  may  find  satisfaction  in  a  lucidity  so  complete 
as  to  occasion  no  imaginative  excitement,  but  young 
and  ambitious  students  are  not  content  with  it.  They 
seek  the  excitement  because  they  are  capable  of  the 
growth  that  it  accompanies.  It  was  a  maxim  of  Goethe 
that  where  there  is  no  mystery  there  is  no  power ; 
and  something  of  the  perennial  vitality  of  his  writ- 
ings may  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  he  did  not 
trouble  himself  too  much  with  the  question  whether 
people  would  understand  him,  but  set  down  his  in- 
most experiences  as  adequately  as  he  could,  and  left 
the  rest  to  time.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Browning, 
and  of  many  other  great  writers. 

Something  similar  holds  true  of  power  in  plastic 
art.  The  sort  of  mystery  most  proper  and  legitimate 
in  art,  however,  is  not  an  intellectual  mystery— 
though  some  artists  have  had  a  great  deal  of  that,  like 
Leonardo,  who  "  conquered  by  the  magnetism  of  an 

316 


LEADEESHIP  OE  PEESONAL  ASCENDENCY 

incalculable  personality  "  * — but  rather  a  sensuous 
mystery,  that  is  to  say  a  vague  and  subtle  appeal  to 
recondite  sources  of  sensuous  impression,  an  awaken- 
ing of  hitherto  unconscious  capacity  for  harmonious 
sensuous  life,  like  the  feeling  we  get  from  the  first 
mild  weather  in  the  spring.  In  this  way,  it  seems  to 
me,  there  is  an  effect  of  mystery,  of  congenial  strange- 
ness, in  all  powerful  art.  Probably  everyone  would 
recognize  this  as  true  of  music,  even  if  all  do  not  feel 
its  applicability  to  painting,  sculpture  and  archi- 
tecture. 

The  well-known  fact  that  mystery  is  inseparable 

___je--. •* - : 1 ~~ „,,.., 

from  higher  religious  idealism  may  be  regarded  as  a 
larger  expression  of  this  same  necessity  of  associat- 
ing inscrutability  with  personal  power.  If  the  imag- 
ination cannot  be  content  with  the  definite  in  lesser 
instances,  it  evidently  cannot  when  it  comes  to  form 
the  completest  image  of  personality  that  it  can  em- 
brace. 

Although  ascendency  depends  upon  what  we  think 
about  a  man  rather  than  what  he  is,  it  is  nevertheless 
true  that  an  impression  of  his  reality  and  good  faith 
is  of  the  first  importance,  and  this  impression  can 
hardly  outlast  close  scrutiny  unless  it  corresponds  to 
the  fact.  Hence,  as  a  rule,  the  man  who  is  to  exercise 
enduring  power  over  others  must  believe  in  that  for 

*  J.  A.  Symonds,  History  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy,  The  Fine 
Arts,  p.  329.  Hamerton  has  some  interesting  observations  on 
mystery  in  art  in  his  life  of  Turner,  p.  352 ;  also  Kuskin  in  Modern 
Painters,  part  v.,  chaps.  4  and  5. 

317 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

which  he  stands.     Such  belief  operates  as  a  potent 
suggestion  upon  the  minds  of  others. 

"  While  thus  he  spake,  his  eye,  dwelling  on  mine, 
Drew  ine,  with  power  upon  me,  till  I  grew 
One  with  him,  to  believe  as  he  believed."  * 

If  we  divine  a  discrepancy  between  a  man's  words 
and  his  character,  the  whole  impression  of  him  be- 
comes broken  and  painful ;  he  revolts  the  imagination 
by  his  lack  of  unity,  and  even  the  good  in  him  is 
hardly  accepted.  Nothing,  therefore,  is  more  fatal 
to  ascendency  than  perceived  insincerity  or  doubt, 
and  in  immediate  intercourse  it  is  hard  to  conceal 
them.  When  Luther  came  to  Rome  and  saw  what 
kind  of  a  man  the  Pope  was,  the  papacy  was  shaken. 
How  far  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  work  upon 
others  through  a  false  idea  of  himself  depends  upon 
a  variety  of  circumstances.  As  already  pointed  out, 
the  man  himself  may  be  a  mere  incident  with  no  def- 
inite relation  to  the  idea  of  him,  the  latter  being  a 
separate  product  of  the  imagination.  This  can  hardly 
be  except  where  there  is  no  immediate  contact  be- 
tween leader  and  follower,  and  partly  explains  why 
authority,  especially  if  it  covers  intrinsic  personal 
weakness,  has  always  a  tendency  to  surround  itself 
with  forms  and  artificial  mystery,  whose  object  is  to 
prevent  familiar  contact  and  so  give  the  imagination 
a  chance  to  idealize.  Among  a  self-reliant,  practical 
people  like  ours,  with  much  shrewdness  and  little 
*  Tennyson,  The  Holy  Grail. 
318 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

traditional  reverence,  the  power  of  .forms  is  dimin- 
ished; but  it  is  always  great.  The  discipline  of 
armies  and  navies,  for  instance,  very  distinctly  recog- 
nizes the  necessity  of  those  forms  which  separate 
superior  from  inferior,  and  so  help  to  establish  an 
unscrutinized  ascendency  in  the  former.  In  the  same 
way  manners,  as  Professor  Ross  remarks  in  his  work 
on  "  Social  Control,"  *  are  largely  used  by  men  of  the 
world  as  a  means  of  self-concealment,  and  this  self- 
concealment  serves,  among  other  purposes,  that  of 
preserving  a  sort  of  ascendency  over  the  unsophisti- 
cated. 

As  regards  intentional  imposture,  it  may  be  said  in 
general  that  all  men  are  subject  to  be  duped  in  mat- 
ters of  which  they  have  no  working  knowledge  and 
which  appeal  strongly  to  the  emotions.  The  applica- 
tion of  this  principle  to  quack  medicine,  to  commer- 
cial swindles,  and  to  the  ever-reappearing  impostures 
relating  to  supposed  communication  with  spirits,  is 
too  plain  to  be  enlarged  upon.  While  it  is  an  ad- 
vantage, even  to  a  charlatan,  to  believe  in  himself, 
the  susceptibility  of  a  large  part  of  us  to  be  duped 
by  quacks  of  one  sort  or  another  is  obvious  enough, 
and  shows  that  the  work  of  free  institutions  in  de- 
veloping shrewdness  is  by  no  means  complete. 

Probably  a  close  and  candid  consideration  of  the 
matter  would  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  everyone  is 
something  of  an  impostor,  that  we  all  pose  more  or 
less,  under  the  impulse  to  produce  a  desired  im- 

*  See  p.  248. 
319 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

pression  upon  others.  As  social  and  imaginative 
beings  we  must  set  store  by  our  appearance  ;  and  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  do  so  without  in  some  degree 
adapting  that  appearance  to  the  impression  we  wish 
to  make.  It  is  only  when  this  adaptation  takes  the 
form  of  deliberate  and  injurious  deceit  that  much 
fault  can  be  found  with  it.  "  We  all,"  says  Stevenson 
in  his  essay  on  Pepys,  "  whether  we  write  or  speak, 
must  somewhat  drape  ourselves  when  we  address  our 
fellows  ;  at  a  given  moment  we  apprehend  our  charac- 
ter and  acts  by  some  particular  side ;  we  are  merry 
with  one,  grave  with  another,  as  befits  the  nature  and 
demands  of  the  relation."  If  we  never  tried  to  seem 
a  little  better  than  we  are,  how  could  we  improve  or 
"  train  ourselves  from  the  outside  inward  "  ?  And  the 
same  impulse  to  show  the  world  a  better  or  idealized 
aspect  of  ourselves  finds  an  organized  expression  in 
the  various  professions  and  classes,  each  of  which 
has  to  some  extent  a  cant  or  pose,  which  its  members 
assume  unconsciously,  for  the  most  part,  but  which 
has  the  effect  of  a  conspiracy  to  work  upon  the  cre- 
dulity of  the  rest  of  the  world.  There  is  a  cant  not 
only  of  theology  and  of  philanthropy,  but  also  of  law, 
medicine,  teaching,  even  of  science — perhaps  espe- 
cially of  science,  just  now,  since  the  more  a  particular 
kind  of  merit  is  recognized  and  admired,  the  more  it 
is  likely  to  be  assumed  by  the  unworthy.  As  theology 
goes  down  and  science  comes  up,  the  affectation  of  dis- 
interestedness and  of  exactness  in  method  tends  to 
supplant  the  affectation  of  piety. 

320 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  imposture  is  of  con- 
siderable but  always  secondary  importance ;  it  is  a 
sort  of  parasite  upon  human  idealism  and  thrives  only 
by  the  impulse  to  believe.  A  correct  intuition  on 
the  part  of  mankind  in  the  choice  of  their  leaders  is 
the  only  guaranty  of  the  effectual  organization  of  life 
in  any  or  every  sphere  ;  and  in  the  long  run  and  on 
a  large  scale  this  correctness  seems  to  exist.  On  the 
whole,  the  great  men  of  history  were  real  men,  not 
shams,  their  characters  were  genuinely  representative 
of  the  deeper  needs  and  tendencies  of  human  nature, 
so  that  in  following  them  men  were  truly  expressing 
themselves. 

We  have  seen  that  all  leadership  has  an  aspect  of 
sympathy  and  conformity,  as  well  as  one  of  individu- 
ality and  self- will,  so  that  every  leader  must  also  be 
a  follower,  in  the  sense  that  he  shares  the  general 
current  of  life.  He  leads  by  appealing  to  our  own 
tendency,  not  by  imposing  something  external  upon 
us.  Great  men  are  therefore  the  symbols  or  exr. 
pressions,  in  a  sense,  of  the  social  conditions,  under 
which  they  work,  and  if  these  conditions  were  not 
favorable  the  career  of  the  great  man  would  be  im- 
possible. 

Does  the  leader,  then,  really  lead,  in  the  sense  that 
the  course  of  history  would  have  been  essentially 
different  if  he  had  not  lived?  Is  the  individual  a 
true  cause,  or  would  things  have  gone  on  about  the 
same  if  the  famous  men  had  been  cut  off  in  infancy  ? 

321 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

Is  not  general  tendency  the  great  thing,  and  is  it  not 
bound  to  find  expression  independently  of  particular 
persons?  Certainly  many  people  have  the  impres- 
sion that  in  an  evolutionary  view  of  life  single  indi- 
viduals become  insignificant,  and  that  all  great 
movements  must  be  regarded  as  the  outcome  of 
vast,  impersonal  tendencies. 

If  one  accepts  the  view  of  the  relation  between  par- 
ticular individuals  and  society  as  a  whole  already 
stated  in  various  connections,  the  answer  to  these 
questions  must  be  that  the  individual  is  a  cause,  as 
independent  as  a  cause  can  be  which  is  part  of  a 
living  whole,  that  the  leader  does  lead,  and  that  the 
course  of  history  must  have  been  notably  different  if 
a  few  great  men  had  been  withdrawn  from  it. 

As  to  general  tendency,  it  is  false  to  set  it  over 
against  individuals,  as  if  it  were  a  separate  thing ;  it 
is  only  through  individuals  that  general  tendency 
begins  or  persists.  "Impersonal  tendency"  in  so- 
ciety is  a  mere  abstraction ;  there  is  no  such  thing. 
Whether  idiosyncrasy  is  such  as  we  all  have  in  some 
measure,  or  whether  it  takes  the  form  of  conspicuous 
originality  or  genius,  it  is  a  variant  element  in  life 
having  always  some  tendency  to  innovation.  Of 
course,  if  we  believe  in  the  prevalence  of  continuity 
and  law,  we  cannot  regard  it  as  a  new  creation  out  of 
nothing ;  it  must  be  a  reorganization  of  hereditary 
and  social  forces.  But  however  this  may  be,  the 
person  as  a  whole  is  always  more  or  less  novel  or 
innovating.  Not  one  of  us  floats  quite  inert  upon 

322 


the  general  stream  of  tendency ;  we  leave  the  world 
somewhat  different  from  what  it  would  have  been  if 
we  had  been  carried  off  by  the  croup. 

Now  in  the  case  of  a  man  of  genius,  this  variant 
tendency  may  be  so  potent  as  to  reorganize  a  large 
part  of  the  general  life  in  its  image,  and  give  it  a 
form  and  direction  which  it  could  not  have  had  other- 
wise. How  anyone  can  look  at  the  facts  and  doubt 
the  truth  of  this  it  is  hard  to  see.  Would  the  life  we 
receive  from  the  last  century  have  been  the  same  if, 
say,  Darwin,  Lincoln,  and  Bismarck  had  not  lived? 
Take  the  case  of  Darwin.  No  doubt  his  greatness 
depended  upon  his  representing  and  fulfilling  an  ex- 
isting tendency,  and  this  tendency  entered  into  him 
from  his  environment,  that  is  from  other  individuals. 
But  it  came  out  of  him  no  longer  the  vague  drift 
toward  evolutionary  theory  and  experiment  that  it 
was  before,  but  concrete,  common-sense,  matter-of- 
fact  knowledge,  thoroughly  Darwinized,  and  so  ac- 
credited by  his  character  and  labors  that  the  world 
accepts  it  as  it  could  not  have  done  if  he  had  not 
lived.  We  may  apply  the  same  idea  to  the  author 
of  Christianity.  Whatever  we  may  or  may  not  believe 
regarding  the  nature  of  Christ's  spiritual  leadership, 
there  is,  I  take  it,  nothing  necessarily  at  variance  with 
a  sound  social  science  in  the  Christian  theory  that 
the  course  of  history  has  been  transformed  by  his 
life. 

The  vague  instincts  which  it  is  the  function  of  the 
leader  to  define,  stimulate  and  organize,  might  have 

323 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  OKDEK 

remained  latent  and  ineffectual,  or  might  have  devel- 
oped in  a  totally  different  manner,  if  he  had  not  lived. 
No  one  can  guess  what  the  period  following  the 
French  Revolution,  or  any  period  of  French  history 
since  then,  might  have  been  without  Napoleon ;  but 
it  is  apparent  that  all  would  have  been  very  different. 
It  is  true  that  the  leader  is  always  a  symbol,  and  can 
work  only  by  using  existing  elements  of  life  ;  but  in 
the  peculiar  way  in  which  he  uses  those  elements  is 
causation,  is  creation,  in  the  only  sense,  perhaps,  in 
which  creation  is  definitely  conceivable.  To  deny  its 
importance  is  as  absurd  as  to  say  that  the  marble 
as  it  comes  from  the  quarry  and  the  marble  after 
Michelangelo  is  through  with  it,  are  one  and  the 
same  thing. 

Most,  if  not  all,  of  our  confusion  regarding  such 
points  as  these  arises  from  the  almost  invincible 
habit  of  thinking  of  "  society,"  or  "  historical  ten- 
dency," as  a  distinct  entity  from  "individuals,"  instead 
of  remembering  that  these  general  and  particular 
terms  merely  express  different  aspects  of  the  same 
concrete  fact — human  life.  In  studying  leadership 
we  may  examine  the  human  army  one  by  one,  and  in- 
quire why  certain  persons  stand  out  from  the  rest  as 
captains,  colonels,  or  generals,  and  what,  in  particu- 
lar, it  is  that  they  have  to  do ;  or,  in  studying  social 
tendency,  we  may  disregard  individuality  and  look  at 
the  movements  of  the  army,  or  of  its  divisions  and 
regiments,  as  if  they  were  impersonal  wholes.  But 
there  is  no  separation  in  fact :  the  leader  is  always 

324 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDENCY 

the  nucleus  of  a  tendency,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  all 
social  movement,  closely  examined,  will  be  found  to 
consist  of  tendencies  having  such  nuclei.  It  is  never 
the  case  that  mankind  move  in  any  direction  with  an 
even  front,  but  there  are  always  those  who  go  before 
and  show  the  way. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  leadership  is  not  &  final  ex- 
planation of  anything;  but  is  simply  one  of  many 
aspects  in  which  human  life,  always  inscrutable,  may 
be  studied.  In  these  days  we  no  longer  look  for  final 
explanations,  but  are  well  content  if  we  can  get  a 
glimpse  of  things  in  process,  not  expecting  to  know 
how  they  began  or  where  they  are  to  end.  The 
leader  is  a  cause,  but,  like  all  causes  we  know  of,  he 
is  also  an  effect.  His  being,  however  original,  is 
rooted  in  the  past  of  the  race,  and  doubtless  as 
susceptible  of  explanation  as  anything  else,  if  we 
could  only  get  at  the  facts. 


325 


CHAPTEE  X 
THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

THE  RIGHT  As  THE  RATIONAL — SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THIS  VIEW — THE 
RIGHT  AS  THE  ONWARD — THE  RIGHT  AS  HABIT — RIGHT  is  NOT 

THE  SOCIAL  AS  AGAINST  THE  INDIVIDUAL — IT  IS,  IN  A  SENSE, 
THE  SOCIAL  AS  AGAINST  THE  SENSUAL — THE  RlGHT  AS  A  SYN- 
THESIS OF  PERSONAL  INFLUENCES — PERSONAL  AUTHORITY — 
CONFESSION,  PRATER,  PUBLICITY — TRUTH — DEPENDENCE  OF 
RIGHT  UPON  IMAGINATION — CONSCIENCE  REFLECTS  A  SOCIAL 
GROUP — IDEAL  PERSONS  AS  FACTORS  IN  CONSCIENCE. 

I  AGREE  with  those  moralists  who  hold  that  what 
we  judge  to  be  the  right  is  simply  the  rational,  in  a 
large  sense  of  that  word.  The  mind  is  tbe  theatre  of 
conflict  for  an  infinite  number  of  impulses,  variously 
originating,  among  which  it  is  ever  striving  to  pro- 
duce some  sort  of  unification  or  harmony.  This 
endeavor  to  harmonize  or  assimilate  includes  deliber- 
ate reasoning,  but  is  something  much  more  general 
and  continuous  than  that.  It  is  mostly  an  uncon- 
scious or  subconscious  manipulation  of  the  materials 
presented,  an  unremitting  comparison  and  rearrange- 
ment of  them,  which  ever  tends  to  organize  them 
into  some  sort  of  a  whole.  The  right,  then,  is  that 
which  stands  this  test;  the  sanction  of  conscience 
attaches  to  those  thoughts  which,  in  the  long  run, 
rniainlaurilieir  places  as  part  of  that  orderly  whole 

326 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

•which  the  mental  instinct  calls  for,  and  which  it  is 
ever  working  with  more  or  less  success  to  build  up. 
That  is  right  which  presents  itself,  after  the  mind 
has  done  its  full  work  upon  the  matter,  as  the  men- 
tally necessary,  which  we  cannot  gainsay  without 
breaking  up  our  mental  integrity. 

According  to  this  view  of  the  matter,  judgments  of 
right  and  wrong  are  in  no  way  isolated  or  radically 
different  in  kind  from  other  judgments.  Such  pe- 
culiarity as  they  have  seems  to  come  chiefly  from  the 
unusual  intensity  of  the  mental  conflict  that  precedes 
them.  The  slightest  scrutiny  of  experience  shows, 
it  seems  to  me,  that  the  sharp  and  absolute  distinc- 
tion often  assumed  to  exist  between  conscience  and 
other  mental  activities  does  not  hold  good  in  life. 
There  are  gradual  transitions  from  judgments  which 
no  one  thinks  of  as  peculiarly  moral,  through  others 
which  some  would  regard  as  moral  and  others  would 
not,  to  those  which  are  universally  so  regarded ;  and 
likewise  moral  feeling  or  sentiment  varies  a  good  deal 
in  different  individuals,  and  in  the  same  individual 
under  different  conditions. 

The  class  of  judgments  which  everyone  considers 
as  moral  is  perhaps  limited  to  such  as  follow  an  ex- 
citing and  somewhat  protracted  mental  struggle,  in- 
volving an  imaginative  weighing  of  conflicting  per- 
sonal ideas.  A  line  of  conduct  has  to  be  chosen ; 
alternatives  present  themselves,  each  of  which  is 
backed  by  strong  impulses,  among  which  are  some, 
at  least,  of  sympathetic  origin ;  the  mind  is  intensely, 

327 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

even  painfully,  aroused,  and  when  a  decision  is 
reached,  it  is  accompanied  by  a  somewhat  peculiar 
sort  of  feeling  called  the  sense  of  obligation,  duty, 
or  right.  There  would  be  little  agreement,  however, 
as  to  what  sort  of  situations  evoke  this  feeling.  We 
are  apt  to  feel  that  any  question  in  regard  to  which 
we  are  much  in  earnest  is  a  question  of  right  and 
wrong.  To  the  artist  a  consciously  false  stroke  of 
brush  or  chisel  is  a  moral  wrong,  a  sin ;  and  a  good 
carpenter  will  suffer  remorse  if  he  lets  a  bad  joint  go 
uncorrected. 

The  fact  that  the  judgment  of  right  is  likely  to 
present  itself  to  people  of  emotional  temperament 
as  an  imagined  voice,  admonishing  them  what  they 
ought  to  do,  is  an  illustration  of  that  essentially  so- 
cial or  interlocutory  character  of  thought,  spoken  of  in 
an  earlier  chapter.  Our  thoughts  are  always,  in  some 
sort,  imaginary  conversations ;  and  when  vividly  felt 
they  are  likely  to  become  quite  distinctly  so.  On 
the  other  hand,  people  whose  moral  life  is  calm  per- 
ceive little  or  no  distinction,  in  this  regard,  between 
the  conclusions  of  conscience  and  other  judgments. 

Of  course,  the  view  that  the  right  is  the  rational 
would  be  untrue,  if  by  rational  were  meant  merely 
the  result  of  formal  reasoning.  The  judgment  of 
right  and  the  conclusion  of  formal  thought  are  fre- 
quently opposed  to  each  other,  because,  I  take  it,  the 
latter  is  a  comparatively  narrow,  partial,  and  conven- 
tional product  of  the  mind.  The  former  is  rational 
and  mentally  authoritative  in  a  larger  sense ;  its 

328 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT   OF  CONSCIENCE 

premises  are  immeasurably  richer ;  it  deals  with  the 
whole  content  of  life,  with  instincts  freighted  with  the 
inarticulate  conclusions  of  a  remote  past,  and  with 
the  unformulated  inductions  of  individual  experience. 
To  set  the  product  of  a  superficial  ratiocination  over 
the  final  output,  in  conscience,  of  our  whole  mental 
being,  is  a  kind  of  pedantry.  I  do  not  mean  to  im- 
ply that  there  is  usually  an  opposition  between  the 
two — they  should  work  harmoniously  together — but 
only  to  assert  that  when  there  is,  conscience  must 
be  regarded  as  of  a  profounder  rationality. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  wrong,  the  immoral,  is,  in  a 
similar  sense,  the  irrational.  It  is  that  which,  after  the 
mind  has  done  its  full  work  upon  the  matter,  presents 
itself  as  the  mentally  isolated,  the  inharmonious,  that 
which  we  cannot  follow  without  having,  in  our  more 
collected  moods,  a  sense  of  having  been  untrue  to  our- 
selves, of  having  done  ourselves  a  harm.  The  mind 
in  its  fullest  activity  is  denied  and  desecrated ;  we 
are  split  in  two.  To  violate  conscience  is  to  act  under 
the  control  of  an  incomplete  and  fragmentary  state 
of  mind ;  and  so  to  become  less  a  person,  to  begin  to 
disintegrate  and  go  to  pieces.  An  unjust  or  inconti- 
nent deed  produces  remorse,  apparently  because  the 
thought  of  it  will  not  lie  still  in  the  mind,  but  is  of  such 
a  nature  that  there  is  no  comfortable  place  for  it  in 
the  system  of  thought  already  established  there. 

The  question  of  right  and  wrong,  as  it  presents  it- 
self to  any  particular  mind,  is,  then,  a  question  of  the 
completest  practicable  organization  of  the  impulses 

329 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

with  which  that  mind  finds  itself  compelled  to  deal. 
The  working  out  of  the  right  conclusion  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  process  by  which  a  deliberative  body 
comes  to  a  conclusion  upon  some  momentous  pub- 
lic measure.  Time  must  be  given  for  all  the  more 
important  passions,  prejudices,  traditions,  interests, 
and  the  like,  to  be  urged  upon  the  members  with 
such  cogency  as  their  advocates  can  give  them,  and 
for  attempts  to  harmonize  these  conflicting  forces 
so  that  a  measure  can  be  framed  which  the  body  can 
be  induced  to  pass.  And  when  a  decision  is  finally 
reached  there  is  a  sense  of  relief,  the  greater  in  pro- 
portion as  the  struggle  has  been  severe,  and  a  ten- 
dency, even  on  the  part  of  the  opposition,  to  regard 
the  matter  as  settled.  Those  people  who  cannot 
achieve  moral  unity,  but  have  always  a  sense  of  two 
personalities  warring  within  them,  may  be  compared 
to  certain  countries  in  whose  assemblies  political  par- 
ties are  so  embittered  that  they  never  come  to  an 
understanding  with  one  another. 

The  mental  process  is,  of  course,  only  the  proxi- 
mate source  of  the  idea  of  right,  the  conflict  by  which 
the  competitive  strength  of  the  various  impulses  is 
measured,  and  some  combination  of  them  achieved  ; 
behind  it  is  the  whole  history  of  the  race  and  of  the 
individual,  in  which  impulses  are  rooted.  Instinc- 
tive passions,  like  love,  ambition,  and  revenge ;  the 
momentum  of  habit,  the  need  of  change,  personal  as- 
cendencies, and  the  like,  all  have  their  bearing  upon 
the  final  synthesis,  and  must  either  be  conciliated  or 

330 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

suppressed.  Thus  in  case  of  a  strong  passion,  like 
revenge  let  us  say,  one  of  two  things  is  pretty  sure  to 
happen  ;  either  it  will  succeed  in  getting  its  revenge- 
ful impulse,  more  or  less  disguised  perhaps,  judged 
as  right ;  or,  if  opposing  ideas  prove  stronger,  re- 
venge will  be  kept  under  by  the  rise  of  an  intense 
feeling  of  wrong  that  associates  itself  with  it.  If  one 
observes  that  a  person  has  a  very  vivid  sense  of  the 
wrong  of  some  particular  impulse,  one  may  usually 
infer  that  he  has  had  in  some  way  to  contend  with  it ; 
either  as  a  temptation  in  his  own  mind,  or  as  inju- 
riously manifested  in  the  conduct  of  others. 

The  natural  way  to  solve  a  moral  question,  when 
immediate  action  is  not  required,  is  to  let  it  lie  in  the 
mind,  turning  it  over  from  time  to  time  as  attention 
is  directed  to  it.  In  this  manner  the  new  situation 
gradually  relates  itself  to  all  the  mental  forces  having 
pertinency  to  it.  The  less  violent  but  more  persist- 
ent tendencies  connect  themselves  quietly  but  firmly 
to  recalcitrant  impulse,  enwrapping  it  like  the  filaments 
of  a  spider's  web,  and  bringing  it  under  discipline. 
Something  of  this  sort  is  implied  in  the  rule  of  con- 
duct suggested  by  Mr.  H.  R.  Marshall,  in  his  excellent 
work,  "  Instinct  and  Reason  "  :  "  Act  to  restrain  the 
impulses  which  demand  immediate  reaction,  in  order 
that  the  impulse  order  determined  by  the  existence 
of  impulses  of  less  strength,  but  of  wider  significance, 
may  have  full  weight  in  the  guidance  of  your  life."  * 

It  occurs  to  me,  however,  that  there  is  no  absolute 

*  See  his  Instinct  and  Reason,  p.  569. 
331 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

rule  that  the  right  is  the  deliberate.  It  is  usually  so, 
because  the  danger  of  irrationality  and  disintegra- 
tion comes,  in  most  cases,  from  the  temporary  sway 
of  some  active  impulse,  like  that  to  strike  or  use 
injurious  words  in  anger.  But  rationality  involves 
decision  as  well  as  deliberation ;  and  there  are  per- 
sons in  whom  the  impulse  to  meditate  and  ponder  so 
much  outweighs  the  impulse  to  decide  and  act,  as 
itself  to  endanger  the  unity  of  life.  Such  a  person 
may  well  come  to  feel  that  the  right  is  the  decisive. 
It  seems  likely  that  in  most  minds  the  larger  ration- 
ality, which  gives  the  sense  of  right,  is  the  sequel  of 
much  pondering,  but  is  definitely  achieved  in  mo- 
ments of  vivid  insight. 

The  main  significance  of  the  view  that  the  right  is 
the  rational  is  to  deny  that  there  is  any  sharp  dis- 
tinction in  kind  between  the  question  of  right  and 
wrong  and  other  mental  questions  ;  the  conclusion  of 
conscience  being  held  to  be  simply  a  more  comprehen- 
sive judgment,  reached  by  the  same  process  as  other 
judgments.  It  still  leaves  untouched  the  remoter 
problems,  mental  and  social,  underlying  all  judg- 
ments ;  as,  for  instance,  of  the  nature  of  impulses,  of 
what  determines  their  relative  intensity  and  persist- 
ence, of  the  character  of  that  process  of  competition 
and  assimilation  among  them  of  which  judgments  are 
the  outcome ;  and  of  the  social  order  as  determining 
impulses  both  indirectly,  through  its  action  upon 
heredity,  and  directly  through  suggestion. 

332 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT   OF  CONSCIENCE 

And  behind  these  is  that  problem  of  problems,  to 
which  all  the  roads  of  thought  lead,  that  question  of 
organization  or  vital  process,  of  which  all  special 
questions  of  society  or  of  the  mind  are  phases.  From 
whatever  point  of  view  we  look  at  life,  we  can  see 
something  going  on  which  it  is  convenient  to  call  or- 
ganization, development,  or  the  like;  but  I  suppose 
that  all  who  have  thought  much  about  the  matter  feel 
that  we  have  only  a  vague  notion  of  what  the  fact  is 
that  lies  behind  these  words. 

I  mention  these  things  merely  to  disclaim  any  pres- 
ent attempt  to  fathom  them,  and  to  point  out  that 
the  aim  of  this  chapter  is  limited  to  some  observa- 
tions on  the  working  of  social  or  personal  factors  in 
the  particular  sort  of  organization  which  we  call  con- 
science or  moral  judgment. 

It  is  useless  to  look  for  any  other  or  higher  cri- 
terion of  right  than  conscience.  What  is  felt  to  be 
right  is  right ;  that  is  what  the  word  means.  Any 
theory  of  right  that  should  turn  out  to  be  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  sense  of  right  must  evidently  be 
judged  as  false.  And  when  it  is  urged  that  con- 
science is  variable,  we  can  only  answer  that,  for  this 
very  reason,  the  right  cannot  be  reduced  to  a  uni- 
versal, and  conclusive  formula.  Like  life  in  all  its 
phases,  it  is  a  progressive  revelation  out  of  depths  we 
do  not  penetrate. 

For  the  individual  considering  his  own  conduct, 
his  conscience  is  the  only  possible  moral  guide,  and 
though  it  differ  from  that  of  everyone  else,  it  is  the 

333 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

only  right  there  is  for  him  ;  to  violate  it  is  to  commit 
moral  suicide.  Speculating  more  largely  on  con- 
duct in  general  he  may  find  the  right  in  some  col- 
lective aspect  of  conscience,  in  which  his  own  con- 
science appears  as  member  of  a  larger  whole ;  and 
with  reference  to  which  certain  particular  consciences, 
at  variance  with  his  own,  like  those  of  certain  sorts 
of  criminals,  may  appear  as  degenerate  or  wrong — and 
this  will  not  surprise  him,  because  science  teaches 
us  to  expect  degenerate  variations  in  all  forms  of 
life.  But,  however  broad  a  view  he  takes,  he  cannot 
do  otherwise  than  refer  the  matter  to  his  conscience  ; 
so  that  what  /  think,  or — to  generalize  it — what  we 
think,  must,  in  one  form  or  another,  be  the  arbiter  of 
right  and  wrong,  so  far  as  there  can  be  any.  Other 
tests  become  valid  only  in  so  far  as  conscience  adopts 
them. 

It  would  seem  that  any  scientific  study  of  the  mat- 
ter must  consist  essentially  in  investigating  the  con- 
ditions and  relations  of  concrete  right — the  when, 
where,  and  why  of  what  people  do  think  is  right.  So- 
cial or  moral  science  can  never  be  a  final  source  or 
test  of  morality ;  though  it  can  reveal  facts  and  rela- 
tions which  may  help  conscience  in  making  its  au- 
thoritative judgment. 

The  view  that  the  right  is  the  rational  is  quite  con- 
sistent with  the  fact  that,  for  those  who  have  surplus 
energy,  the  right  is  the  onward.  The  impulse  to  act, 
to  become,  to  let  out  the  life  that  rises  within  from 

334 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

obscure  springs  of  power,  is  the  need  of  needs,  un- 
derlying all  more  special  impulses ;  and  this  onward 
Trieb  must  always  count  in  our  judgments  of  right : 
it  is  one  of  the  things  conscience  has  to  make  room 
for.  There  can  be  no  harmony  in  a  mental  life  which 
denies  expression  to  this  most  persistent  and  funda- 
mental of  all  instinctive  tendencies :  and  consequently 
the  equilibrium  which  the  active  mind  seeks,  and  a 
sense  of  which  is  one  with  the  sense  of  right,  is  never 
a  state  of  rest,  but  an  equilibrium  mobile.  Our  situa- 
tion may  be  said  to  resemble  that  of  an  acrobat  bal- 
ancing himself  upon  a  rolling  sphere,  and  enabled 
to  stand  upright  only  on  condition  of  moving  contin- 
ually forward.  The  right  never  remains  precisely  the 
same  two  days  in  succession ;  but  as  soon  as  any  par- 
ticular state  of  right  is  achieved,  the  mental  centre  of 
gravity  begins  to  move  onward  and  away  from  it,  so 
that  we  can  hold  our  ground  only  by  effecting  a  new 
adjustment.  Hence  the  merely  negative  can  never  be 
the  right  to  a  vigorous  person,  or  to  a  vigorous  so- 
ciety, because  the  mind  will  not  be  content  with  any- 
thing so  inadequate  to  its  own  nature.  The  good  self 
must  be  what  Emerson  calls  a  "  crescive  self,"  and 
the  right  must  mark  a  track  across  the  "  waste  abyss 
of  possibility  "  and  lead  out  the  energies  to  congenial 
exertioD. 

This  idea  is  nowhere,  perhaps,  more  cogently  stated 
and  illustrated  than  in  M.  Guyau's  penetrating  work, 
"  A  Sketch  of  Morality."  He  holds  that  the  sense  of 
duty  is,  in  one  aspect,  a  sense  of  a  power  to  do  things, 

335 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  that  this  power  tends  in  itself  to  create  a  sense 
of  obligation.  We  can,  therefore  we  must.  "  Obli- 
gation is  an  internal  expansion — a  need  to  complete 
our  ideas  by  converting  them  into  action."  *  Even 
pain  may  be  sought  as  part  of  that  larger  life  which 
the  growing  mind  requires.  "Leopardi,  Heine, 
or  Lenau  would  probably  not  have  exchanged 
those  hours  of  anguish  in  which  they  composed 
their  finest  songs  for  the  greatest  possible  enjoy- 
ment. Dante  suffered.  .  .  .  Which  of  us  would 
not  undergo  a  similar  suffering  ?  Some  heart-aches 
are  infinitely  sweet."  t  And  so  with  benevolence 
and  what  is  called  self-sacrifice.  "...  charity 
is  but  one  with  overflowing  fecundity;  it  is  like  a 
maternity  too  large  to  be  confined  within  the  family. 
The  mother's  breast  needs  life  eager  to  empty  it ;  the 
heart  of  the  truly  humane  creature  needs  to  be  gentle 
and  helpful  to  all."  t  "  The  young  man  is  full  of  en- 
thusiasm ;  he  is  ready  for  every  sacrifice  because,  in 
point  of  fact,  it  is  necessary  that  he  should  sacrifice 
something  of  himself — that  he  should  diminish  him- 
self to  a  certain  extent ;  he  is  too  full  of  life  to  live 
only  for  himself."  § 

The  right,  then,  is  not  merely  the  repressive  dis- 
cipline with  which  we  sometimes  identify  it,  but  is 
also  something  warm,  fresh  and  outward-looking. 
That  which  we  somewhat  vaguely  and  coldly  call 

*  M.  J.  Guyau,  Esquisse  d'une  Morale  sans  Obligation  ni  Sanc- 
tion, English  translation,  p.  93. 

t  Idem,  p.  149.  J  Idem,  p.  87.  §  Idem,  p.  82. 

336 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

mental  development  is,  when  at  its  best,  the  revela- 
tion of  an  expanding,  variegating,  and  beautiful  whole, 
of  which  the  right  act  is  a  harmonious  member. 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  we  say  that  right  is 
largely  determined  by  habit,  we  only  emphasize  the 
other  aspect  of  that  progressive  mingling  of  continuity 
with  change,  which  we  see  in  mental  life  in  all  its 
phases.  Habit,  we  know,  makes  lines  of  less  resist- 
ance in  thought,  feeling,  and  action ;  and  the  existence 
of  these  tracks  must  always  count  in  the  formation  of 
a  judgment  of  right,  as  of  any  other  judgment.  It 
ought  not,  apparently,  to  be  set  over  against  novel 
impulses  as  a  contrary  principle,  but  rather  thought 
of  as  a  phase  of  all  impulses,  since  novelty  always 
consists,  from  one  point  of  view,  in  a  fresh  combina- 
tion of  habits.  It  is  much  the  same  question  as  that 
of  suggestion  and  choice,  or  of  invention  and  imita- 
tion. The  concrete  fact,  the  real  thing,  in  each  case, 
is  not  one  of  these  as  against  the  other,  or  one  modi- 
fied by  the  other,  but  a  single,  vital  act  of  which  these 
are  aspects,  having  no  separate  existence. 

Whether  a  person's  life,  in  its  moral  or  any  other 
aspect,  is  obviously  changeful,  or,  on  the  contrary, 
appears  to  be  merely  repetitive  or  habitual,  depends 
upon  whether  the  state  of  his  mind,  and  of  the  condi- 
tions about  it,  are  favorable  to  rapid  changes  in  the 
system  of  his  thought.  Thus  if  he  is  young  and  vig- 
orous, and  if  he  has  a  natural  open-mindedness  and 
keenness  of  sensibility,  he  will  be  so  much  the  more 

337 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

likely,  other  things  equal,  to  incorporate  fresh  ele- 
ments of  thought  and  make  a  new  synthesis,  instead 
of  running  on  habit.  Variety  of  life  in  the  past, 
preventing  excessive  deepening  of  the  mental  ruts, 
and  contact  with  strong  and  novel  influences  in  the 
present,  have  the  same  tendency. 

The  rigidly  habitual  or  traditionary  morality  of 
savages  is  apparently  a  reflection  of  the  restriction 
and  sameness  of  their  social  life ;  and  a  similar  type 
of  morals  is  found  even  in  a  complex  society,  as  in 
China,  when  the  social  system  has  become  rigid  by  the 
equilibration  of  competing  ideas.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  stir  and  change  of  the  more  active  parts  of  our 
society  make  control  by  mere  habit  impossible. 
There  are  no  simple  dominant  habits;  tendencies 
are  mixed  and  conflicting,  so  that  the  person  must 
either  be  intelligently  moral  or  else  degenerate.  He 
must  either  make  a  fresh  synthesis  or  have  no  syn- 
thesis at  all. 

What  is  called  principle  appears  to  be  simply  a 
habit  of  conscience,  a  rule  formed  originally  by  a 
synthesis  of  various  impulses,  but  become  somewhat 
mechanical  and  independent  of  its  origin — as  it  is 
the  nature  of  habit  to  do.  As  the  mind  hardens 
and  matures  there  is  a  growing  inaptitude  to  take  in 
novel  and  powerful  personal  impressions,  and  a  cor- 
responding ascendency  of  habit  and  system  ;  social 
sentiment,  the  flesh  and  blood  of  conduct,  partly  falls 
away,  exposing  a  skeleton  of  moral  principles.  The 
sense  of  duty  presents  itself  less  and  less  as  a  vivid 

338 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

sympathetic  impulse,  and  more  and  more  as  a  sense 
of  the  economy  and  restfulness  of  a  definite  standard 
of  conduct.  When  one  has  come  to  accept  a  certain 
course  as  duty  he  has  a  pleasant  sense  of  relief  and 
of  lifted  responsibility,  even  if  the  course  involves 
pain  and  renunciation.  It  is  like  obedience  to  some 
external  authority ;  any  clear  way,  though  it  lead  to 
death,  is  mentally  preferable  to  the  tangle  of  un- 
certainty. 

Actions  that  appear  memorable  or  heroic  are  sel- 
dom achieved  at  the  moment  of  decisive  choice,  but 
are  more  likely  to  come  after  the  habit  of  thought 
which  produces  the  action  has  become  somewhat  me- 
chanical and  involuntary.  It  is  probably  a  mistake 
to  imagine  that  the  soldier  who  braves  death  in  bat- 
tle, the  fireman  who  enters  the  burning  building,  the 
brakeman  who  pursues  his  duty  along  the  icy  top  of 
a  moving  train,  or  the  fisherman  who  rows  away  from 
his  vessel  into  the  storm  and  mist,  is  usually  in  an 
acute  state  of  heroism.  It  is  all  in  the  day's  work ; 
the  act  is  part  of  a  system  of  thought  and  conduct 
which  has  become  habitual  and  would  be  painful  to 
break.  Death  is  not  imagined  in  all  its  terrors  and 
compared  with  social  obligation ;  the  case  is  far  sim- 
pler. As  a  rule  there  is  no  time  in  a  crisis  for  com- 
plicated mental  operations,  and  whether  the  choice 
is  heroic  or  cowardly  it  is  sure  to  be  simple.  If 
there  is  any  conflict  of  suggestions  it  is  brief,  and  the 
one  that  gains  ascendency  is  likely  to  be  followed 
mechanically,  without  calculation  of  the  future. 

339 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

One  who  studies  the  "  sense  of  oughtness  "  in  chil- 
dren will  have  no  difficulty  in  seeing  that  it  springs 
largely  from  a  reluctance  to  break  habits,  an  indispo- 
sition, that  is,  to  get  out  of  mental  ruts.  It  is  in  the 
nature  of  the  mind  to  seek  a  principle  or  unifying 
thought — the  mind  is  a  rule -demanding  instinct — 
and  in  great  part  this  need  is  met  by  a  habit  of 
thought,  inculcated  perhaps  by  some  older  person 
who  proclaims  and  enforces  the  rule,  or  perhaps  by 
the  unintended  pressure  of  conditions  which  empha- 
size one  suggestion  and  shut  out  others.  However 
the  rule  originates,  it  meets  a  mental  want,  and,  if 
not  too  strongly  opposed  by  other  impulses,  is  likely 
to  be  adopted  and  felt  as  obligatory  just  because  it 
is  a  consistent  way  of  thinking.  As  Mr.  Sully  says, 
"  The  truth  is  that  children  have  a  tremendous  belief 
in  law."  * 

The  books  on  child-study  give  many  instances  of 
the  surprising  allegiance  which  children  often  give  to 
rule,  merely  as  rule,  and  even  an  intermittent  ob- 
server will  be  sure  to  corroborate  them.  Thus  a 
child  five  years  old,  when  on  a  visit,  was  invited  to 
"  open  his  mouth  and  shut  his  eyes,"  and  upon  his 
doing  so  a  piece  of  candy  was  put  into  the  former. 
When  he  tasted  it  he  pulled  it  out  and  exclaimed, 
"  Mamma  don't  want  me  to  have  candy."  Now  this 
did  not  seem  to  be  affectation,  nor  was  the  child 
other  than  fond  of  sweets,  nor  afraid  of  punishment 
or  blame ;  he  was  simply  under  the  control  of  a  need 

*  Studies  of  Childhood,  p.  284. 
340 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT   OF  CONSCIENCE 

for  mental  consistency.  The  no-candy  rule  had  been 
promulgated  and  enforced  at  home  ;  he  had  adopted 
it  as  part  of  his  system  of  thought,  and,  when  it  was 
broken,  his  moral  sense,  otherwise  the  harmony  of  his 
mind,  was  shocked  to  a  degree  that  the  sweet  taste 
of  the  candy  could  not  overcome.  Again,  R.  was  sub- 
jected nearly  every  evening  for  several  years  to  a 
somewhat  painful  operation  called  "  bending  his 
foot,"  intended  to  correct  a  slight  deformity.  After 
becoming  accustomed  to  this  he  would  sometimes 
protest  and  even  cry  if  it  were  proposed  to  omit  it. 
I  thought  I  could  see  that  moral  allegiance  to  a  rule, 
merely  as  such,  weakened  as  he  grew  older;  and 
the  explanation  of  this  I  took  to  be  that  the  increas- 
ing competition  of  suggestions  and  conflict  of  pre- 
cepts made  this  simple,  mechanical  unity  impossible, 
and  so  forced  the  mind,  still  striving  for  harmony,  to 
exert  its  higher  organizing  activity  and  attempt  a 
larger  sort  of  unification.  It  is  the  same  principle  as 
that  which  prevents  the  civilized  man  from  retaining 
the  simple  allegiance  to  rule  and  habit  that  the  sav- 
age has ;  his  complex  life  cannot  be  unified  in  this 
way,  any  more  than  his  accounts  can  be  notched  on  a 
stick  ;  and  he  is  forced,  if  he  is  to  achieve  any  unity 
of  life,  to  seek  it  in  some  more  elaborate  standard 
of  behavior.  Under  uniform  conditions  the  habitual 
is  the  rational,  and  therefore  the  moral ;  but  under 
complex  conditions  this  ceases  to  be  the  case. 

Of  course  this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter  does 
not  do  away  with  all  the  difficulties  involved  in  it, 

341 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

but  does,  it  seems  to  me,  put  habitual  and  other  mo- 
rality on  the  common  ground  of  rationality,  and  show 
the  apparently  sharp  division  between  them  to  be  an 
illusion. 

Those  who  think  as  I  do  will  reject  the  opinion 
that  the  right  is,  in  any  general  sense,  the  social  as 
opposed  to  the  individual.  As  already  stated,  I  look 
upon  this  antithesis  as  false  when  used  to  imply  a 
radical  opposition.  All  our  human  thought  and  ac- 
tivity is  either  individual  or  social,  according  to  how 
you  look  at  it,  the  two  being  no  more  than  phases  of 
the  same  thing,  which  common  thought,  always  in- 
clined to  confuse  words  with  things,  attempts  to  sep- 
arate. This  is  as  true  in  the  ethical  field  as  in  any 
other.  The  consideration  of  other  persons  usually 
enters  largely  into  questions  of  right  and  wrong ;  but 
the  ethical  decision  is  distinctly  an  assertion  of  a  pri- 
vate, individualized  view  of  the  matter.  Surely  there 
is  no  sound  general  principle  in  accordance  with 
which  the  right  is  represented  by  the  suggestions  of 
the  social  environment,  and  the  wrong  by  our  more 
private  impulses. 

The  right  is  always  a  private  impulse,  always  a 
self-assertion,  with  no  prejudice,  however,  to  its  social 
character.  The  "  ethical  self  "  is  not  less  a  self  for 
being  ethical,  but  if  anything  more  of  a  self,  because 
it  is  a  fuller,  more  highly  organized  expression  of 
personality.  All  will  recognize,  I  imagine,  that  a 
strong  sense  of  duty  involves  self-feeling,  so  that  we 

342 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

say  to  ourselves  emphatically  /  ought.  It  would  be 
no  sense  of  duty  at  all  if  we  did  not  feel  that  there 
was  something  about  it  peculiar  to  us  and  antithetical 
to  some  of  the  influences  acting  upon  us.  It  is  im- 
portant for  many  purposes  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 
the  ethical  self  is  always  a  public  self;  but  it  is 
equally  true  and  important  that  it  is  always  a  private 
self. 

In  short,  ethical  thinking  and  feeling,  like  all  our 
higher  life,  has  its  individual  and  social  aspects, 
with  no  peculiar  emphasis  on  either.  If  the  social 
aspect  is  here  at  its  highest,  so  also  is  the  individual 
aspect. 

The  same  objection  applies  to  any  form  of  the 
antithesis  self  versus  other,  considered  as  a  general 
statement  of  moral  situations.  It  is  a  fallacious  one, 
involving  vague  and  material  notions  of  what  per- 
sonality is — vague  because  material,  for  we  cannot,  I 
think,  reflect  closely  upon  the  facts  of  personality 
without  seeing  that  they  are  primarily  mental  or 
spiritual,  and  by  no  means  even  analogous  to  the 
more  obvious  aspects  of  the  physical.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  ego  and  alter,  self  and  sympathy,  are  correla- 
tive, and  always  mingled  in  ethical  judgments,  which 
are  not  distinguished  by  having  less  self  and  more 
other  in  them,  but  by  being  a  completer  synthesis  of 
all  pertinent  impulses.  :The  characteristic  of  a  sense 
of  right  is  not  ego  or  alter,  individual  or  social,  but 
mental  unification,  and  the  peculiar  feeling  that  ac- 
companies it. 

343 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

Egoism  can  be  identified  with  wrong  only  when 
we  mean  by  it  some  narrow  or  unstable  phase  of  the 
self;  and  altruism,  if  we  take  it  to  mean  suscepti- 
bility to  be  impressed  by  other  people,  is  equally 
wrong  when  it,  in  turn,  becomes  narrow  or  unstable, 
as  we  see  it  in  hysterical  persons.  As  I  have  al- 
ready said,  I  hold  altruism,  when  used,  as  it  seems 
to  be  ordinarily,  to  denote  a  supposed  peculiar  class 
of  impulses,  separate  from  another  supposed  class 
called  egoistic,  to  be  a  mere  fiction,  engendered  by 
the  vaguely  material  idea  of  personality  just  men- 
tioned. Most  higher  kinds  of  thought  are  altruistic, 
in  the  sense  that  they  involve  a  more  or  less  distinct 
reference  to  other  persons ;  but  when  intensely  con- 
ceived, these  same  kinds  of  thought  are  usually,  if 
not  always,  self-thoughts,  or  egoistic,  as  well. 

The  question  whether  a  man  shall  keep  his  dollar 
or  give  it  to  a  beggar,  for  example,  looks  at  first  sight 
like  a  question  of  ego  versus  alter,  because  there  are 
two  physical  bodies  present  and  visibly  associated 
with  the  conflicting  impulses.  In  this  merely  physi- 
cal sense,  of  referring  to  one  material  body  rather 
than  another,  it  is  in  fact  such  a  question,  but  not 
necessarily  in  any  properly  mental,  social,  or  moral 
sense. 

Let  us  look  at  the  matter  a  moment  with  reference 
to  various  possible  meanings  of  the  words  altruism 
and  altruistic.  Taking  the  latter  word  as  the  most 
convenient  for  our  purpose,  I  can  think  of  three  mean- 
ings, any  one  of  which  would  answer  well  enough  to 

344 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

the  vague  current  usage  of  it :  first,  that  which  is 
suggested  by  another  person,  that  is  by  his  appear- 
ance, words,  or  other  symbols;  second,  that  which 
is  for  the  benefit  of  another ;  third,  good  or  moral. 

In  the  first  sense,  which  carries  no  moral  impli- 
cation at  all,  it  is  altruistic  to  give  to  the  beggar,  but 
the  word  is  also  applicable  to  the  greater  part  of  our 
actions,  since  most  of  them  are  suggested  by  others 
in  some  way.  And,  of  course,  many  of  the  actions 
included  are  what  are  generally  called  selfish  ones. 
To  strike  a  man  with  whom  we  are  angry,  to  steal 
from  one  of  whom  we  are  envious,  to  take  liberties 
with  an  attractive  woman,  and  all  sorts  of  reprehen- 
sible proceedings  suggested  by  the  sight  of  another 
person,  would  be  altruistic  in  this  sense,  which  I  sup- 
pose, therefore,  cannot  be  the  one  intended  by  those 
who  use  the  word  as  the  antithesis  to  egoistic. 

If  we  use  the  word  in  the  second  sense,  that  of 
being  for  the  benefit  of  another,  to  give  to  the  beggar 
may  or  may  not  be  altruistic  ;  thoughtful  philanthropy 
is  inclined  to  say  that  it  is  usually  for  his  harm.  It 
may,  perhaps,  be  said  that  we  at  least  intend  to  ben- 
efit or  please  him,  that  this  is  the  main  thing,  and 
that  it  is  a  question  whether  the  action  has  an  I-ref- 
erence  or  a  you- reference  in  the  mind  of  the  actor. 
As  to  this  I  would  again  call  attention  to  what  was 
said  of  the  nature  of  I  and  you  as  personal  ideas  in 
Chapter  III.,  and  of  the  nature  of  egotism  in  Chapter 
VI.  Our  impulses  regarding  persons  cannot,  in  my 
opinion,  be  classified  in  this  way.  What  could  be 

345 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

more  selfish  than  the  action  of  a  mother  who  cannot 
refuse  her  child  indigestible  sweetmeats  ?  She  gives 
them  both  to  please  the  child  and  to  gratify  a  shal- 
low self  which  is  identified  with  him.  To  refuse  the 
money  to  the  beggar  may  be  as  altruistic,  in  the  sense 
of  springing  from  the  desire  to  benefit  others,  as  to 
give  it.  The  self  for  which  one  wishes  to  keep  the 
dollar  is  doubtless  a  social  self  of  some  sort,  and 
very  possibly  has  better  social  claims  upon  him  than 
the  beggar :  he  may  wish  to  buy  flowers  for  a  sick 
child. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  to  give  the  money  is  not 
•  necessarily  the  moral  course.  The  attempt  to  iden- 
tify the  good  with  what  refers  to  others  as  against 
what  refers  to  one's  self  is  hopelessly  confusing 
and  false,  both  theoretically  and  in  practical  appli- 
cation. 

In  short  it  is  hard  to  discover,  in  the  word  altru- 
ism, any  definite  moral  significance. 
I  The  individual  and  the  group  are  related  in  respect 
'  to  moral  thought  quite  as  they  are  everywhere  else  ; 
individual  consciences  and  the  social  conscience  are 
not  separate  things,  but  aspects  of  one  thing,  namely, 
the  moral  Life,  which  may  be  regarded  as  individual 
by  fixing  our  attention  upon  a  particular  conscience 
in  artificial  isolation,  or  as  general,  by  attending  to 
some  collective  phase,  like  public  opinion  upon  a 
moral  question.  Suppose,  for  instance,  one  were  a 
member  of  the  Congress  that  voted  the  measure 
which  brought  on  the  war  with  Spain.  The  question 

346 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

how  he  should  vote  on  this  measure  would  be,  in  its 
individual  aspect,  a  matter  of  private  conscience ;  and 
so  with  all  other  members.  But  taking  the  vote  as  a 
whole,  as  a  synthesis,  showing  the  moral  drift  of  the 
group,  it  appears  as  an  expression  of  a  social  con- 
science. The  separation  is  purely  artificial,  every 
judgment  of  an  individual  conscience  being  social  in 
that  it  involves  a  synthesis  of  social  influences,  and 
every  social  conscience  being  a  collective  view  of  in- 
dividual consciences.  The  concrete  thing,  the  moral 
Life,  is  a  whole  made  up  of  differentiated  members. 
If  this  is  at  all  hard  to  grasp,  it  is  only  because  the 
fact  is  a  large  one.  We  certainly  cannot  get  far  un- 
less we  can  learn  to  see  organization,  since  all  our 
facts  present  it. 

The  idea  that  the  right  is  the  social  as  opposed  to 
the  sensual  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  sound  one,  if  _we 
mean  by  it  that  the  mentally  higher,  more  personal 
or  imaginative  impulses  have  on  the  whole  far  more 
weight  in  conscience  than  the  more  sensual.  The 
immediate  reason  for  this  seems  to  be  that  the  mind 
of  one  who  shares  the  higher  life  is  so  thronged  with 
vivid  personal  or  social  sentiments,  that  the  merely 
sensual  cannot  be  the  rational  except  where  it  is  al- 
lied with  these,  or  at  any  rate  not  opposed  to  them. 
It  is  for  the  psychologist  to  explain  the  mental  proc- 
esses involved,  but  apparently  the  social  interests 
prevail  in  conscience  over  the  sensual  because  they 
are  the  major  force ;  that  is,  they  are,  on  the  whole,  so 

347 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

much  more  numerous,  vivid,  and  persistent,  that  they 
determine  the  general  system  of  thought,  of  which 
conscience  is  the  fullest  expression. 

We  may,  perhaps,  represent  the  matter  nearly 
enough  for  our  purpose  by  comparing  the  higher  and 
lower  kinds  of  thought  to  the  human  race  and  the  in- 
ferior animals.  The  former  is  so  much  more  powerful, 
on  the  whole,  though  not  always  so  individually,  that 
it  determines,  in  all  settled  countries,  the  general  or- 
ganization of  life,  erecting  cities  and  railroads,  clear- 
ing forests,  and  the  like,  to  suit  itself,  and  with  only 
incidental  regard  to  other  animals.  The  latter  are 
preserved  within  the  system  only  in  so  far  as  they  are 
useful,  or  at  any  rate  not  very  troublesome,  to  man- 
kind. So  all  sensual  impulses  are  judged  by  their 
relation  to  a  system  of  thought  dominated  by  social 
sentiment.  The  pleasures  of  eating,  harmless  in  them- 
selves, begin  to  be  judged  wrong  so  soon  as  they  are 
indulged  in  such  a  way  as  to  blunt  the  higher  facul- 
ties, or  to  violate  justice,  decency,  or  the  like.  A  ship- 
wrecked man,  it  is  felt,  should  rather  perish  of  hunger 
than  kill  and  eat  another  man,  because  the  latter 
action  violates  the  whole  system  of  social  thought. 
And  in  like  manner  it  is  held  that  a  soldier,  or  indeed 
any  man,  should  prefer  honor  and  duty  to  life  itself. 

The  working  of  personal  influence  upon  our  judg- 
ments of  right  is  not  different  in  kind  from  its  work- 
ing upon  other  judgments :  it  simply  introduces  vivid 
impulses,  which  affect  the  moral  synthesis  something 

348 


in  the  way  that  picking  up  a  weight  will  change  one's 
centre  of  gravity  and  force  him  to  alter  his  footing. 

As  was  suggested  above,  the  morality  of  mere  rule 
and  habit  becomes  the  less  conspicuous  in  the  life  of 
children  the  more  they  are  subjected  to  fresh  per- 
sonal influences.  If  their  sympathies  are  somewhat 
dull,  or  if  they  are  secluded,  their  minds  naturally 
become  grooved ;  and  all  children,  perhaps,  become 
much  bound  to  habit  in  matters  where  personal  in- 
fluence is  not  likely  to  interfere.  But  in  most  chil- 
dren, and  in  most  matters,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
moral  judgment  and  feeling  are,  from  the  very  earliest, 
intensely  sympathetic  and  personal,  charged  with 
shame,  affection,  anger,  jealousy,  and  desire  to  please. 
The  mind  has  already  to  struggle  for  harmony  among 
vivid  emotions,  aroused  by  the  appeals  of  life  to 
hereditary  instinct,  each  giving  intensity  to  certain 
ideas  of  conduct,  and  tending  to  sway  the  judgment 
of  right  in  their  sense. 

If  the  boy  who  refused  the  candy,  as  mentioned 
above,  had  possessed  a  vivid  imagination  of  personal 
attitudes,  which  he  did  not,  his  situation  might  have 
been  much  more  intricate.  He  might  have  been  drawn 
to  accept  it  not  only  by  the  sweet  taste  but  by  a  de- 
sire to  please  the  friends  who  offered  it ;  and  on  the 
other  hand  he  might  have  been  deterred  by  a  vision 
of  the  reproving  face  and  voice  of  his  mother.  Thus 
M.,  nearly  sixteen  months  old,  had  been  frowned  at 
and  called  naughty  in  a  severe  tone  of  voice  when 
she  tried  to  claw  her  brother's  face.  Shortly  after, 

349 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

while  sitting  with  him  on  the  bed,  her  mother  being 
at  a  distance,  she  was  observed  to  repeat  the  offence 
and  then,  without  further  cause  or  suggestion,  to  bow 
her  head  and  look  abashed  and  guilty.  Apparently 
she  had  a  sense  of  wrong,  a  conviction  of  sin,  per- 
haps consisting  only  in  a  reminiscence  of  the  shame 
she  had  previously  felt  when  similar  behavior  was  fol- 
lowed by  rebuke. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  simple  manifestation  of  a 
moral  force  that  acts  upon  every  one  of  us  in  count- 
less ways,  and  every  day  of  his  life — the  imagined 
approval  or  disapproval  of  others,  appealing  to  in- 
stinctive emotion,  and  giving  the  force  of  that  emotion 
to  certain  views  of  conduct.  The  behavior  that  con- 
nects itself  with  such  social  sentiment  as  we  like  and 
feel  the  impulse  to  continue,  is  so  much  the  more 
likely  to  be  judged  as  right ;  but  if  the  sentiment  is 
one  from  which  we  are  averse,  the  behavior  is  the 
more  likely  to  be  judged  as  wrong.  The  child's  moral 
sense,  says  Perez,  "  begins  as  soon  as  he  understands 
the  signification  of  certain  intonations  of  the  voice, 
of  certain  attitudes,  of  a  certain  expression  of  coun- 
tenance, intended  to  reprimand  him  for  what  he  has 
done  or  to  warn  him  against  something  he  was  on 
the  point  of  doing.  This  penal  and  remunerative 
sanction  gives  rise  by  degrees  to  a  clear  distinction  of 
concrete  good  and  evil."  * 

A  child  who  is  not  sensitive  to  praise  or  blame,  but 
whose  interests  are  chiefly  impersonal,  or  at  any  rate 
*See  his  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  287. 
350 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

only  indirectly  personal,  sometimes  appears  to  have 
no  moral  sense  at  all,  to  be  without  the  conviction  of 
sin  or  any  notion  of  personal  wrong.  He  has  little 
experience  of  those  peculiarly  acute  and  trying  mental 
crises  which  result  from  the  conflict  of  impulses  of 
sympathetic  origin  with  one  another  or  with  animal 
appetites.  This  was  much  the  case  with  B.  in  his 
earliest  years.  Living  in  quiet  surroundings,  some- 
what isolated  from  other  children,  with  no  violent  or 
particularly  mischievous  impulses,  occupied  all  day 
long  with  blocks,  sand-pile,  and  other  impersonal 
interests,  not  sensitive  to  blame  nor  inclined  to  take  it 
seriously,  he  gave  the  impression  of  being  non-moral, 
an  unfallen  spirit.  M.  was  the  very  opposite  of  all 
this.  From  the  first  week  she  was  visibly  impulsive, 
contentious,  sensitive,  sympathetic ;  laying  traps  for 
approval,  rebelling  against  criticism,  sudden  and 
quick  to  anger,  sinning,  repenting,  rejoicing;  living 
almost  altogether  in  a  vivid  personal  world. 

A  character  of  the  latter  sort  has  an  intenser  moral 
life,  because  the  variety  of  strong  impulses  introduced 
by  a  sensitive  and  personally  imaginative  tempera- 
ment are  sure  to  make  crises  for  the  mind  to  wrestle 
with.  The  ethics  of  personal  feeling  which  it  has  to 
work  out  seems  widely  apart  from  the  ethics  of  rule 
and  habit,  as  in  fact  it  is,  so  far  as  regards  the  mate- 
rials that  enter  into  the  moral  synthesis.  The  color 
and  content,  all  the  concrete  elements  of  the  moral 
life,  are  as  different  as  are  the  different  characters  of 
people :  the  idea  of  right  is  not  a  fraction  of  thought 

351 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

alike  in  all  minds,  but  a  comprehensive,  integrating 
state  of  mind,  characteristic  of  the  personality  of 
which  it  is  an  expression. 

The  idea  of  justice  is,  of  course,  a  phase  of  the  idea 
of  right,  and  arises  out  of  the  mental  attempt  to  rec- 
oncile conflicting  impulses.  As  Professor  Baldwin 
points  out,  the  child  is  puzzled  by  contradictions 
between  his  simpler  impulses,  such  as  those  to  ap- 
propriate food  and  playthings,  and  other  impulses  of 
more  imaginative  or  sympathetic  origin.  Needing  to 
allay  this  conflict  he  readily  grasps  the  notion  of  a 
tertium  quid,  a  reconciling  rule  or  law  which  helps 
him  to  do  so. 

Our  mature  life  is  not  radically  distinguished  from 
childhood  as  regards  the  working  of  personal  influence 
upon  our  moral  thought.  If  there  is  progress  it  is  in 
the  way  of  fulness  of  experience  and  better  organiza- 
tion: the  mental  life  may  become  richer  in  those 
sympathetic  or  imaginative  impulses  which  we  derive 
from  healthy  intercourse  with  the  world,  and  without 
a  good  store  of  which  our  judgments  of  right  must  be 
narrow  and  distorted ;  there  may  at  the  same  time 
be  a  completer  ordering  and  discipline  of  these  ma- 
terials, a  greater  power  to  construct  the  right,  the 
unifying  thought,  out  of  diverse  elements,  a  quicker 
recognition  of  it  when  achieved,  and  a  steadier  dis- 
position to  act  upon  it.  In  most  cases,  perhaps, 
a  person  after  thirty  years  of  age  gains  something 
in  the  promptness  and  steadfastness  of  his  moral 
judgment,  and  loses  something  in  the  imaginative 

352 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

breadth  of  his  premises.  But  the  process  remains 
the  same,  and  our  view  of  right  is  still  a  sort  of  micro- 
cosm of  our  whole  character.  Whatever  characteristic 
passions  we  have  will  in  some  way  be  represented  in 
it,  and  until  we  stiffen  into  mental  rigidity  and  de- 
cline, it  will  change  more  or  less  with  every  impor- 
tant change  in  our  social  surroundings. 

To  a  very  large  class  of  minds,  perhaps  to  the 
largest  class,  the  notion  of  right  presents  itself  chiefly 
as  a  matter  of  personal  authority.  That  is,  what  we 
feel  we  ought  to  do  is  simply  what  we  imagine  our 
guide  or  master  would  do,  or  would  wish  us  to  do. 
This,  for  instance,  is  the  idea  very  largely  inculcated 
and  practised  by  the  Christian  Church.  It  is  not 
anything  opposed  to  or  different  from  the  right  as  a 
^mental  synthesis,  but  simply  means  that  admiration, 
reverence,  or  some  other  strong  sentiment,  gives  such 
overwhelming  force  to  the  suggestions  of  a  certain 
example,  that  they  more  or  less  completely  dominate 
the  mind.  The  authority  works  through  conscience 
and  not  outside  of  it.  Moreover  the  relation  is  not 
so  one-sided  as  it  would  seem,  since  our  guide  is  al- 
ways, in  one  point  of  view,  the  creation  of  our  own 
imaginations,  which  are  sure  to  interpret  him  in  a 
manner  congenial  to  our  native  tendency.  Thus  the 
Christ  of  Fra  Angelico  is  one  thing,  and  the  Christ 
of  Michelangelo,  directing  the  ruin  of  the  damned, 
is  quite  another. 

The  ascendency  of  personal  authority  is  usually 
353 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

greater  in  proportion  as  the  mind  is  of  a  simple, 
visually  imaginative,  rather  than  reflective  turn.  Peo- 
ple of  the  sort  commonly  called  "  emotional,"  with 
ready  and  vivid  personal  feeling  but  little  construc- 
tive power,  are  likely  to  yield  to  an  ascendent  influ- 
ence as  a  whole,  with  little  selection  or  reconstruc- 
tion. Their  individuality  is  expressed  chiefly  in  the 
choice  of  a  master ;  having  chosen,  they  are  all  his. 
If  they  change  masters  they  change  morals  at  the 
same  time.  The  mental  unity  of  which  they,  like  all 
the  rest  of  us,  are  in  search,  is  found  in  allegiance  to 
a  concrete  personality,  which  saves  them  the  impos- 
sible task  of  abstract  thought.  Such  people,  however, 
usually  feel  an  attraction  toward  stability  in  others, 
and  secure  it  for  themselves  by  selecting  a  steadfast 
personality  to  anchor  their  imaginations  to. 

This,  of  course,  is  possible  or  congenial  only  to 
those  who  lack  the  mental  vigor  to  make  in  a  more 
intellectual  manner  that  synthesis  of  which  moral 
judgment  is  the  expression.  Those  who  have  this 
vigor  make  use  of  many  examples,  and  if  they  ac- 
knowledge the  pre-eminence  of  anyone,  he  is  likely 
to  be  vaguely  conceived  and  to  be  in  reality  no  more 
than  the  symbol  of  their  own  moral  conclusions. 

The  immediate  power  of  personal  images  or  influ- 
ences over  our  sense  of  right  is  probably  greater  in 
all  of  us  than  we  realize.  "  It  is  wonderful,"  says 
George  Eliot  in  "  Middlemarch,"  "  how  much  uglier 
things  will  look  when  we  only  think  we  are  blamed 
for  them  .  .  .  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  aston- 

354 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

ishing  how  pleasantly  conscience  takes  our  encroach- 
ments on  those  who  never  complain,  or  have  nobody 
to  complain  for  them."  That  is  to  say,  other  per- 
sons, by  awaking  social  self-feeling  in  us,  give  life 
and  power  to  certain  sentiments  of  approval  or  dis- 
approval regarding  our  own  actions.  The  rule,  al- 
ready suggested,  that  the  self  of  a  sensitive  person, 
in  the  presence  of  an  ascendent  personality,  tends  to 
become  his  interpretation  of  what  the  other  thinks  of 
him,  is  a  prime  factor  in  determining  the  moral  judg- 
ments of  all  of  us.  Everyone  must  have  felt  the 
moral  renewal  that  comes  with  the  mere  presence  of 
one  who  is  vigorously  good,  whose  being  enlivens  our 
aspiration  and  shames  our  backsliding,  who  makes  us 
really  feel  the  desirability  of  the  higher  life  and  the 
baseness  and  dulness  of  the  lower. 

In  one  of  Mr.  Theodore  Child's  papers  on  French 
art  he  relates  that  Dagnan  said  after  the  death  of 
Bastien-Lepage,  "  With  every  new  picture  I  paint  in 
future  I  shall  try  to  think  if  he  would  have  been 
satisfied  with  it."  Almost  the  same  has  been  said 
by  an  American  author  with  reference  to  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson.  And  these  instances  are  typical 
of  the  general  fact  that  our  higher  selves,  our  dis- 
tinctively right  views  and  choices,  are  dependent 
upon  imaginative  realization  of  the  points  of  view  of 
other  persons.  There  is,  I  think,  no  possibility  of 
being  good  without  living,  imaginatively  of  course, 
in  good  company  ;  and  those  who  uphold  the  moral 
power  of  personal  example,  as  against  that  of  ab- 

355 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

stract  thought  are  certainly  in  the  right.  A  mental 
crisis,  by  its  very  difficulty,  is  likely  to  call  up  the 
thought  of  some  person  we  have  been  used  to  look 
to  as  a  guide,  and  the  confronting  of  the  two  ideas, 
that  of  the  person  and  that  of  the  problem,  compels 
us  to  answer  the  question  What  would  he  have 
thought  of  it  ?  The  guide  we  appeal  to  may  be  a 
person  in  the  room,  or  a  distant  friend,  or  an  author 
whom  we  have  never  seen,  or  an  ideal  person  of 
religion.  The  strong,  good  men  we  have  once 
imagined  live  in  our  minds  and  fortify  there  the  idea 
of  worthiness.  They  were  free  and  noble  and  make 
us  unhappy  to  be  less. 

Of  course  the  influence  of  other  persons  often  goes 
by  contraries.  The  thought  of  one  who  is  repug- 
nant to  us  often  brings  a  strong  sense  of  the  wrong 
of  that  for  which  he  stands,  and  our  conviction  of 
the  hatefulness  of  any  ill  trait  is  much  enlivened  by 
intimate  contact  with  one  who  exhibits  it. 

The  moral  potency  of  confession,  and  of  all  sorts 
of  publicity,  rests  upon  the  same  basis.  In  opening 
ourselves  to  another  we  are  impelled  to  imagine  how 
our  conduct  appears  to  him  ;  we  take  an  outside 
view  of  ourselves.  It  makes  a  great  difference  to 
whom  we  confess :  the  higher  the  character  of  the 
person  whose  mind  we  imagine,  the  more  enlighten- 
ing and  elevating  is  the  view  of  ourselves  that  we 
get.  Even  to  write  our  thoughts  in  a  diary,  and  so 
to  confess,  not  to  a  particular  person,  but  to  that 

356 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

vague  image  of  an  interlocutor  that  connects  itself 
with  all  articulate  expression,  makes  things  look 
different. 

It  is,  perhaps,  much  the  same  with  prayer.  To 
pray,  in  a  higher  sense,  is  to  confront  our  moral 
perplexities  with  the  highest  personal  ideal  we  can 
form,  and  so  to  be  unconsciously  integrating  the  two, 
straightening  out  the  one  in  accordance  with  the 
other.  It  would  seem  that  social  psychology  strongly 
corroborates  the  idea  that  prayer  is  an  essential 
aspect  of  the  higher  life ;  by  showing,  I  mean,  that 
thought,  and  especially  vivid  thought,  is  interlocutory 
in  its  very  nature,  and  that  aspiration  almost  neces- 
sarily takes,  more  or  less  distinctly,  the  form  of  in- 
tercourse with  an  ideal  being. 

Whatever  publishes  our  conduct  introduces  new 
and  strong  factors  into  conscience ;  but  whether  this 
publicity  is  wholesome  or  otherwise  depends  upon 
the  character  of  the  public ;  or,  more  definitely,  upon 
whether  the  idea  of  ourselves  that  we  impute  to  this 
public  is  edifying  or  degrading.  In  many  cases,  for 
instance,  it  is  ruinous  to  a  person's  character  to  be 
publicly  disgraced,  because  he,  or  she,  presently  ac- 
cepts the  degrading  self  that  seems  to  exist  in  the 
minds  of  others.  There  are  some  people  to  whom 
we  should  be  ashamed  to  confess  our  sins,  and  others, 
perhaps,  to  whom  we  should  not  like  to  own  our 
virtues.  Certainly  it  should  not  be  assumed  that  it 
is  good  for  us  to  have  our  acts  displayed  before  the 
generality  of  persons:  while  this  may  be  a  good 

357 


thing  as  regards  matters,  like  the  tax-roll,  that  relate 
to  our  obvious  duty  to  the  immediate  community,  it 
has  in  most  things  a  somewhat  vulgarizing  effect, 
tending  to  promote  conformity  rather  than  a  dis- 
tinctive life.  If  the  scholar's  study  were  on  the  mar- 
ket-place, so  that  the  industrious  townspeople  could 
see  how  many  hours  of  the  day  he  spends  in  apparent 
idleness,  he  might  lack  courage  to  pursue  his  vocation. 
In  short,  we  need  privacy  as  against  influences  that 
are  not  edifying,  and  communion  with  those  that  are. 

Even  telling  the  truth  does  not  result  so  much 
from  a  need  of  mental  accuracy,  though  this  is  strong 
in  some  minds,  as  from  a  sense  of  the  unfairness  of 
deceiving  people  of  our  own  sort,  and  of  the  shame 
of  being  detected  in  so  doing.  Consequently  the 
maxim,  "  Truth  for  friends  and  lies  for  enemies,"  is 
very  generally  followed,  not  only  by  savages  and 
children,  but,  more  or  less  openly,  by  civilized  peo- 
ple. Most  persons  feel  reluctant  to  tell  a  lie  in  so 
many  words,  but  few  have  any  compunctions  in  de- 
ceiving by  manner,  and  the  like,  persons  toward 
whom  they  feel  no  obligation.  We  all  know  business 
men  who  will  boast  of  their  success  in  deceiving 
rivals;  and  probably  few  of  us  hold  ourselves  to 
quite  the  same  standard  of  honor  in  dealing  with  one 
we  believe  to  be  tricky  and  ill-disposed  toward  us, 
that  we  would  if  we  thought  him  honest  and  well 
meaning.  "  Conscience  is  born  of  love  "  in  this  as 
in  many  matters.  A  thoughtful  observer  will  easily 

358 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

see  that  injustice  and  not  untruth  is  the  essence  of 
lying,  as  popularly  conceived. 

It  is  because  of  our  need  to  recall  vanished  per- 
sons, that  all  goodness  and  justice,  all  right  of  any 
large  sort,  depend  upon  an  active  imagination. 
Without  it  we  are  the  prisoners  of  the  immediate 
environment  and  of  the  suggestions  of  the  lower  or- 
ganism. It  is  only  this  that  enables  us  to  live  with 
the  best  our  lives  have  afforded,  and  maintain  higher 
suggestions  to  compete  with  the  baser  ones  that  assail 
us.  Let  us  hear  Professor  James  again :  "  When 
for  motives  of  honor  and  conscience  I  brave  the  con- 
demnation of  my  own  family,  club  and  '  set ' ;  when 
as  a  Protestant  I  turn  Catholic ;  as  a  Catholic,  free- 
thinker; as  a  'regular  practitioner,'  homeopath,  or 
what  not,  I  am  always  inwardly  strengthened  in  my 
course,  and  steeled  against  the  loss  of  my  actual 
social  self  by  the  thought  of  other  and  better  possible 
social  judges  than  those  whose  verdict  goes  against 
me  now.  The  ideal  social  self  which  I  thus  seek  in 
appealing  to  their  decision  may  be  very  remote ;  it 
may  be  represented  as  barely  possible.  I  may  not 
hope  for  its  realization  during  my  lifetime;  I  may 
even  expect  the  future  generations,  which  would  ap- 
prove me  if  they  knew  me,  to  know  nothing  about 
me  when  I  am  dead  and  gone."  *  As  regards  the 
nearness  or  remoteness  of  the  companion  it  would 
perhaps  be  sufficient  to  say  that  if  imagined  he  is 

*  Psychology,  Tol.  i.,  p.  315. 
359 


HUMAN  NATUBE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

actually  present,  so  far  as  our  mental  and  moral  life 
are  concerned,  and  except  as  affecting  the  vividness 
of  our  idea  of  him,  it  makes  no  immediate  difference 
whether  we  ever  saw  him  or  whether  he  ever  had  any 
corporeal  existence  at  all. 

The  alteration  of  conscience  due  to  the  advent  in 
thought  of  a  new  person  is  often  so  marked  that  one 
view  of  duty  is  quite  evidently  supplanted  by  a  fresh 
one,  due  to  the  fresh  suggestion.  Thus,  to  take  an 
example  probably  familiar  to  all  who  are  used  to 
mental  application,  it  sometimes  happens  that  a 
student  is  fagged  and  yet  feels  that  he  must  think 
out  his  problem ;  there  is  a  strong  sense  of  oughtness 
backing  this  view,  which,  so  long  as  it  is  unopposed, 
holds  its  ground  as  the  call  of  duty.  But  now  a 
friend  may  come  in  and  suggest  to  him  that  he  ought 
to  stop,  that  if  he  goes  on  he  will  harm  himself  and 
do  poor  work.  Here  is  another  view  of  right,  and 
the  mind  must  now  make  a  fresh  synthesis  and  come, 
perhaps,  to  feel  that  its  duf.y  is  to  leave  off. 

Because  of  its  dependence  upon  personal  sug- 
gestion, the  right  always  reflects  a  social  group  ;  there 
is  always  a  circle  of  persons,  more  or  less  extended, 
whom  we  really  imagine,  and  who  thus  work  upon 
our  impulses  and  our  conscience ;  while  people  out- 
side of  this  have  not  a  truly  personal  existence  for 
us.  The  extent  of  this  circle  depends  upon  many 
circumstances,  as  for  instance  upon  the  vigor  of  our 
imaginations,  and  the  reach  of  the  means  of  communi- 

360 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

cation  through  which  personal  symbols  are  impressed 
upon  them. 

In  these  days  of  general  literacy,  many  get  their 
most  potent  impressions  from  books,  and  some,  find- 
ing this  sort  of  society  more  select  and  stimulating 
than  any  other,  cultivate  it  to  the  neglect  of  palpable 
persons.  This  kind  of  people  often  have  a  very  ten- 
der conscience  regarding  the  moral  problems  pre- 
sented in  novels,  but  a  rather  dull  one  for  those  of 
the  flesh-and-blood  life  about  them.  In  fact,  a  large 
part  of  the  sentiments  of  imaginative  persons  are 
purely  literary,  created  and  nourished  by  intercourse 
with  books,  and  only  indirectly  connected  with  what 
is  commonly  called  experience.  Nor  should  it  be  as- 
sumed that  these  literary  sentiments  are  necessarily 
a  mere  dissipation.  Our  highest  ideals  of  life  come 
to  us  largely  in  this  way,  since  they  depend  upon 
imaginative  converse  with  people  we  do  not  have  a 
chance  to  know  in  the  flesh.  Indeed,  the  expansion 
of  conscience  that  is  so  conspicuous  a  fact  of  recent 
years,  the  rise  of  moral  sentiment  regarding  inter- 
national relations,  alien  races  and  social  and  indus- 
trial classes  other  than  our  own,  could  not  have  taken 
place  without  the  aid  of  cheap  printing  and  rapid 
communication.  Such  understanding  and  sense  of 
obligation  as  we  have  regarding  the  populace  of 
great  cities,  for  instance,  is  due  chiefly  to  writers  who, 
like  the  author  of  "  How  the  Other  Half  Lives,"  de- 
scribe the  life  of  such  people  in  a  vivid,  personal  way, 
and  so  cause  us  to  imagine  it. 

361 


HUMAN  NATTJKE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  OKDEK 

Not  to  pursue  this  line  of  thought  too  far,  it  is 
enough  for  our  purpose  to  note  that  conscience  is 
always  a  group  conscience,  however  the  group  may 
be  formed,  so  that  our  moral  sentiment  always  reflects 
our  time,  our  country,  and  our  special  field  of  per- 
sonal imagination.  On  the  other  hand,  our  sense  of 
right  ignores  those  whom  we  do  not,  through  sym- 
pathy, feel  as  part  of  ourselves,  no  matter  how  close 
their  physical  contiguity.  To  the  Norman  conqueror 
the  Saxon  was  an  inferior  animal,  whose  sentiments 
he  no  more  admitted  to  his  imagination,  I  suppose, 
than  a  farmer  does  those  of  his  cattle,  and  toward 
whom,  accordingly,  he  did  not  feel  human  obligation. 
It  was  the  same  with  the  slaveholder  and  the  slave, 
and  so  it  sometimes  is  with  employer  and  wage- 
earner.  The  behavior  of  the  Europeans  toward  the 
Chinese  during  the  recent  invasion  of  China  showed 
in  a  striking  manner  how  completely  moral  obligation 
breaks  down  in  dealing  with  people  who  are  not  felt 
to  be  of  kindred  humanity  with  ourselves. 

In  minds  capable  of  constructive  imagination  the 
social  factor  in  conscience  may  take  the  form  of  ideal 
persons,  whose  traits  are  used  as  a  standard  of  be- 
havior. 

Idealization,  of  this  or  any  other  sort,  is  not  to 
be  thought  of  as  sharply  marked  off  from  experience 
and  memory.  It  seems  probable  that  the  mind  is 
never  indifferent  to  the  elements  presented  to  it,  but 
that  its  very  nature  is  to  select,  arrange,  harmonize, 

362 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

idealize.  That  is,  the  whole  is  always  acting  upon 
the  parts,  tending  to  make  them  one  with  itself. 
What  we  call  distinctively  an  ideal  is  only  a  relatively 
complex  and  finished  product  of  this  activity.  The 
past,  as  it  lives  in  our  minds,  is  never  a  mere  repe- 
tition of  old  experience,  but  is  always  colored  by  our 
present  feeling,  is  always  idealized  in  some  sense ; 
and  it  is  the  same  with  our  anticipation  of  the  future, 
so  that  to  wholesome  thought  expectation  is  hope. 
Thus  the  mind  is  ever  an  artist,  re-creating  things 
in  a  manner  congenial  to  itself,  and  special  arts  are 
only  a  more  deliberate  expression  of  a  general  ten- 
dency. 

An  ideal,  then,  is  a  somewhat  definite  and  felicitous 
product  of  imagination,  a  harmonious  and  congenial 
reconstruction  of  the  elements  of  experience.  And  a 
personal  ideal  is  such  a  harmonious  and  congenial  re- 
construction of  our  experience  of  persons.  Its  active 
function  is  to  symbolize  and  define  the  desirable,  and 
by  so  doing  to  make  it  the  object  of  definite  endeavor. 
The  ideal  of  goodness  is  only  the  next  step  beyond 
the  good  man  of  experience,  and  performs  the  same 
energizing  office.  Indeed,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  there  is  no  separation  between  actual  and  ideal 
persons,  only  a  more  or  less  definite  connection  of 
personal  ideas  with  material  bodies. 

There  are  all  degrees  of  vagueness  or  definition  in 
our  personal  ideals.  They  may  be  no  more  than 
scattered  imaginings  of  traits  which  we  have  met  in 
experience  and  felt  to  be  worthy ;  or  they  may 

363 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

assume  such  fulness  and  cohesion  as  to  be  distinct 
ideal  persons.  There  may  even  be  several  personal 
ideals ;  one  may  cherish  one  ideal  of  himself  and  a 
different  one  for  each  of  his  intimate  friends ;  or  his 
imagination  may  project  several  ideals  of  himself,  to 
correspond  to  various  phases  of  his  development. 

Probably  the  phrase  "ideal  person"  suggests 
something  more  unified  and  consistent  than  is  actually 
present  in  the  minds  of  most  people  when  they  con- 
ceive the  desirable  or  good  in  personal  character.  Is 
it  not  rather  ideal  traits  or  sentiments,  fragments  of 
personal  experience,  phases  of  past  intercourse  re- 
turning in  the  imagination  with  a  new  emphasis  in 
the  presence  of  new  situations  ?  We  have  at  times 
divined  in  other  people  courage,  generosity,  patience 
and  justice,  and  judged  them  to  be  good.  Now,  when 
we  find  ourselves  in  a  situation  where  these  traits  are 
called  for,  we  are  likely  to  be  reminded  by  that  very 
fact  of  our  previous  experience  of  them  ;  and  the 
memory  of  it  brings  these  sentiments  more  vividly 
to  life  and  gives  them  more  authority  in  conscience. 
Thus  a  person  hesitating  whether  to  smuggle  in  duti- 
able goods  is  likely  to  think  in  his  perplexity  of  some 
one  whom  he  has  come  to  regard  as  honorable  in 
such  matters,  and  of  how  that  one  would  feel  and  act 
under  like  conditions. 

This  building  up  of  higher  personal  conceptions 
does  not  lend  itself  to  precise  description.  It  is 
mostly  subconscious  ;  the  mind  is  continually  at  work 
ordering  and  bettering  its  past  and  present  experi- 

364 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

ences,  working  them  up  in  accordance  with  its  own 
instinctive  need  for  consistency  and  pleasantness; 
ever  idealizing,  but  rarely  producing  clean-cut  ideals. 
It  finds  its  materials  both  in  immediate  personal  in- 
tercourse and  through  books  and  other  durable  media 
of  expression.  "Books,  monuments,  pictures,  con- 
versation, are  portraits  in  which  he  finds  the  linea- 
ments he  is  forming."  "All  that  is  said  of  the  wise 
man  .  .  .  describes  to  each  reader  his  own  idea, 
describes  his  unattained  but  attainable  self." *  "A 
few  anecdotes,  a  few  traits  of  character,  manners, 
face,  a  few  incidents,  have  an  emphasis  in  your  mem- 
ory out  of  all  proportion  to  their  apparent  signifi- 
cance, if  you  measure  them  by  the  ordinary  standards. 
They  relate  to  your  gift.  Let  them  have  their  weight, 
and  do  not  reject  them  and  cast  about  for  illustra- 
tions more  usual  in  literature.  What  your  heart 
thinks  great  is  great.  The  soul's  emphasis  is  always 
right."  f 

Idealism  in  this  vague  form  has  neither  first,  second, 
nor  third  person.  It  is  simply  an  impression  of  the 
desirable  in  personality,  and  is  impulsively  applied 
to  your  conduct,  my  conduct,  or  his  conduct,  as  the 
case  may  be.  The  sentiment  occurs  to  us,  and  the  con- 
nection in  which  it  occurs  determines  its  moral  appli- 
cation. We  sometimes  speak  as  if  it  required  an  un- 
usual effort  of  virtue  to  apply  the  same  standards  to 
ourselves  as  to  others ;  and  so  it  does,  in  one  sense ; 
but  in  another  it  is  easier  and  more  common  to  do 

*  Emerson,  History.  f  Idem,  Spiritual  Laws. 

365 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

this  than  not  to  do  it.  The  simplest  thing,  as  regards 
the  mental  process  concerned,  is  to  take  ideas  of  con- 
duct as  they  come,  without  thinking  specially  where 
they  come  from,  and  judge  them  by  the  standard  that 
conscience  presents  to  us.  Injustice  and  personal 
wrong  of  all  sorts,  as  between  one's  self  and  others, 
commonly  consist,  not  in  imagining  the  other  man's 
point  of  view  and  refusing  to  give  it  weight ;  but  in 
not  imagining  it,  not  admitting  him  to  the  tribunal  at 
all.  It  is  in  exerting  the  imagination  that  the  effort 
of  virtue  comes  in.  One  who  entertains  the  thought 
and  feeling  of  others  can  hardly  refuse  them  justice ; 
he  has  made  them  a  part  of  himself.  There  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  no  first  or  second  person  about  a  senti- 
ment ;  if  it  is  alive  in  the  mind  that  is  all  there  is  to 
the  matter. 

It  is  perhaps  the  case,  however,  that  almost  every 
person  of  imagination  has  at  times  a  special  and 
somewhat  definite  ideal  self,  concerning  which  he  has 
the  "  my "  feeling,  and  which  he  would  not  use  in 
judging  others.  It  is,  like  all  ideals,  a  product  of 
constructive  imagination  working  upon  experience. 
It  represents  what  we  should  like  to  see  ourselves, 
and  has  an  especially  vigorous  and  varied  life  in  early 
youth,  when  the  imagination  projects  models  to  match 
each  new  aspiration  that  gains  power  over  it.  In  a 
study  of  the  "Continued  Stories"  of  children,  by 
Mabel  W.  Learoyd,  many  interesting  facts  are  given 
illustrating  sustained  self-idealization.  These  con- 
tinued stories  are  somewhat  consecutive  series  of 

366 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

imaginations  on  the  part  of  the  young,  recalled  and 
described  at  a  later  period.  Two-thirds  are  said  to 
embody  an  ideal,  and  the  author,  in  an  idealized 
form,  is  the  hero  of  many  of  them.*  An  instance  of 
this  same  process  continued  into  old  age  is  the  fact 
mentioned  by  Mr.  E.  W.  Emerson  in  his  "Emerson 
in  Concord,"f  that  the  poet's  diary  contains  fre- 
quent allusion  to  one  Osman,  who  stands  for  an  ideal 
self,  a  more  perfect  Emerson  of  his  aspiration. 

It  would  always  be  found,  I  think,  that  our  ideal 
self  is  constructed  chiefly  out  of  ideas  about  us 
attributed  to  other  people.  We  can  hardly  get  any 
distinct  view  of  ourselves  except  in  this  way,  that  is 
by  placing  ourselves  at  the  standpoint  of  someone 
else.  The  impressions  thus  gained  are  worked  over 
and  over,  like  other  mental  material,  and,  according 
to  the  imaginative  vigor  of  the  mind,  more  or  less  re- 
organized, and  projected  as  an  ideal. 

With  some  this  ideal  is  quite  definite  and  visible 
before  the  eye  of  the  mind.  I  have  heard  the  expres- 
sion "  seeing  yourself  "  applied  to  it.  Thus  one  woman 
.says  of  another  "  She  always  sees  herself  in  evening 
dress,"  meaning  that  her  ideal  of  herself  is  one  of 
social  propriety  or  distinction,  and  that  it  takes  the 
form  of  an  image  of  her  visible  person  as  it  appears 
to  others  in  a  shape  expressing  these  traits.  This  is, 
of  course,  a  phase  of  the  reflected  self,  discussed  in 
the  fifth  chapter.  Some  people  "  see  themselves  "  so 

*  Amer.  Jour,  of  Psychology,  vol.  7,  p.  86. 
t  See  pp.  101,  210,  226. 
367 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

constantly,  and  strive  so  obviously  to  live  up  to  the 
image,  that  they  give  a  curious  impression  of  always 
acting  a  part,  as  if  one  should  compose  a  drama  with 
himself  as  chief  personage,  and  then  spend  his  life 
playing  it.  Perhaps  something  of  this  sort  is  inevi- 
table with  persons  of  vivid  imagination. 

Once  formed  and  familiarized  the  ideal  self  serves, 
like  any  ideal  only  more  directly,  as  an  incitement  to 
growth  in  its  direction,  and  a  punishment  to  retro- 
gression. A  man  who  has  become  used  to  imagining 
himself  as  noble,  beneficent  and  respected  has  a  real 
picture  in  his  mind,  a  fair  product  of  aspiring 
thought,  a  work  of  art.  If  his  conduct  violates  this 
imagination  he  has  a  sense  of  ugliness  and  shame ; 
there  is  a  rent  in  the  picture,  a  rude,  shapeless  hole, 
shattering  its  beauty,  and  calling  for  painful  and 
tedious  repairs  before  it  can  be  even  tolerable  to 
look  upon.  Repentance  is  the  pain  of  this  spectacle ; 
and  the  clearer  and  more  firmly  conceived  the  ideal, 
the  greater  the  pain. 

The  ideal  person  or  persons  of  an  ethical  religion 
are  the  highest  expression  of  this  creative  outreach- 
ing  of  the  mind  after  the  admirable  in  personality. 
It  can  hardly  be  supposed,  by  anyone  who  is  willing 
to  go  into  the  psychology  of  the  matter  at  all,  that 
they  are  radically  different  from  other  ideal  persons, 
or  in  any  way  sharply  divided  from  the  mass  of  per- 
sonal thought.  Any  comparative  study  of  idealism, 
among  nations  in  various  stages  of  civilization,  among 
persons  of  different  intellectual  power,  among  the 

368 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

various  periods  of  development  in  one  individual,  can 
hardly  fail,  I  should  say,  to  leave  a  conviction  that 
all  hangs  together,  that  there  is  no  chasm  anywhere, 
that  the  most  rudimentary  idealizing  impulse  of  the 
savage  or  the  child  is  of  a  piece  with  the  highest 
religious  conceptions.  The  tendency  of  such  a  view, 
of  course,  is  not  to  drag  down  the  exalted,  but  to 
show  all  as  part  of  a  common  life. 

All  ideals  of  personality  are  derived  from  inter- 
course, and  all  that  attain  any  general  acceptance 
have  a  social  organization  and  history.  Each  histori- 
cal epoch  or  nation  has  its  somewhat  distinctive  per- 
sonal ideals,  which  are  instilled  into  the  individual 
from  the  general  store  of  thought.  It  is  especially 
true  that  the  persons  of  religion  have  this  character. 
They  are  communal  and  cumulative,  are  gradually 
built  up  and  become  in  some  degree  an  institution. 
In  this  way  they  may  acquire  richness,  clearness, 
sanctity,  and  authority,  and  may  finally  be  inculcated 
as  something  above  and  outside  of  the  human  mind. 
The  latter  is  certain  to  happen  if  they  are  made  the 
basis  of  a  discipline  to  be  applied  to  all  sorts  of 
people.  The  dogma  that  they  are  extra-human  serves, 
like  the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  a  court,  to  secure  to 
them  the  prestige  of  distance  and  inaccessibility. 

It  is  a  chief  function  of  religious  organization  to 
make  the  moral  synthesis  more  readily  attainable,  by 
establishing  a  spiritual  discipline,  or  system  of  in- 
fluences and  principles,  which  shall  constantly  stim- 
ulate one's  higher  sentiments,  and  furnish  a  sort  of 

369 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

outline  or  scaffolding  of  suggestions  to  aid  him  in 
organizing  his  thought.  In  doing  this  its  main  agent 
is  the  inculcation  of  personal  ideals,  although  the 
teaching  of  creeds  is  also,  perhaps,  important  to  the 
same  purpose.  It  is  apparently  part  of  the  legitimate 
function  of  organized  moral  thought  to  enter  the 
vaguer  fields  of  speculation  about  conduct  and  in- 
culcate provisional  ideas,  relating  for  instance  to  the 
origin  and  meaning  of  life — matters  which  the  mind 
must  and  will  explore,  with  or  without  a  guide.  To 
have  suggested  to  them  definite  ways  of  thinking  re- 
garding such  matters  helps  to  make  mental  unity  pos- 
sible, and  to  save  men  from  the  aimless  and  distract- 
ing wanderings  that  often  end  in  despair.  Of  course 
these  ideas  must  be  in  harmony  with  the  general  state 
of  thought,  consistent,  for  example,  with  the  estab- 
lished results  of  science.  Otherwise  they  only  in- 
crease the  distraction.  But  a  credible  creed  is  an 
excellent  thing,  and  the  lack  of  it  is  a  real  moral 
deficiency. 

Now  in  times  of  intellectual  unsettlement,  like  the 
present,  the  ideal  may  become  disorganized  and  scat- 
tered, the  face  of  God  blurred  to  the  view,  like  the 
reflection  of  the  sun  in  troubled  waters.  And  at  the 
same  time  the  creeds  become  incredible,  so  that,  until 
new  ones  can  be  worked  out  and  diffused,  each  man 
must  either  make  one  for  himself — a  task  to  which 
few  are  equal — or  undergo  distraction,  or  cease  to 
think  about  such  matters,  if  he  can.  This  state  of 
things  involves  some  measure  of  demoralization,  al- 

370 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

though  it  may  be  part  of  a  movement  generally  be- 
neficent. Mankind  needs  the  highest  vision  of  per- 
sonality, and  needs  it  clear  and  vivid,  and  in  the  lack 
of  it  will  suffer  a  lack  in  the  clearness  and  cogency  of 
moral  thought.  It  is  the  natural  apex  to  the  pyra- 
mid of  personal  imagination,  and  when  it  is  wanting 
there  will  be  an  unremitting  and  eventually  more  or 
less  successful  striving  to  replace  it.  When  it  re- 
appears it  will,  of  course,  express  in  all  its  lineaments 
a  new  era  of  thought ;  but  the  opinion  that  it  is  gone 
to  stay,  which  is  entertained  by  some,  seems  very 
ill  grounded. 


371 


CHAPTEE  XI 
PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

Is  A  PHASE  OF  THE  QUESTION  OF  EIGHT  AND  WRONG — RELATION 
TO  THE  IDEA  OF  DEVELOPMENT — JUSTIFICATION  AND  MEANING  OF 
THE  PHRASE  "  PERSONAL  DEGENERACY  " — HEREDITARY  AND 
SOCIAL  FACTORS  IN  PERSONAL  DEGENERACY — DEGENERACY  AS  A 
MENTAL  TRAIT — CONSCIENCE  IN  DEGENERACY — CRIME,  INSAN- 
ITY, AND  RESPONSIBILITY — GENERAL  AIMS  IN  THE  TREATMENT 
OF  DEGENERACY. 

I  WISH  to  touch  upon  this  subject  only  in  so  far  as 
to  suggest  a  general  way  of  conceiving  it  in  accord 
with  the  views  set  forth  in  the  preceding  chapters. 

The  question  of  personal  degeneracy  is  a  phase  of 
the  question  of  right  or  wrong  and  is  ultimately  de- 
termined by  conscience.  A  degenerate  might  be  de- 
fined as  one  whose  personality  falls  distinctly  short 
of  a  standard  set  by  the  dominant  moral  thought  of  a 
group.  It  is  the  nature  of  the  mind  to  form  stand- 
ards of  better  or  worse  in  all  matters  toward  which 
its  selective  activity  is  directed  ;  and  this  has  its  col- 
lective as  well  as  its  individual  aspect,  so  that  not 
only  every  man  but  every  group  has  its  preferences 
and  aversions,  its  good  and  bad.  The  selective,  or- 
ganizing processes  which  all  life,  and  notably  the 
life  of  the  mind,  presents,  involve  this  distinction  ;  it 
is  simply  a  formulation  of  the  universal  fact  of  prefer- 

372 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

ence.  We  cannot  view  things  in  which  we  are  inter- 
ested without  liking  some  and  disliking  others  ;  and 
somewhat  in  proportion  to  our  interest  is  our  ten- 
dency to  express  these  likes  and  dislikes  by  good  and 
bad  or  similar  words.  And  since  there  is  nothing 
that  interests  us  so  much  as  persons,  judgments  of 
right  and  wrong  regarding  them  have  always  been 
felt  and  expressed  with  peculiar  zest  and  emphasis. 
The  righteous  and  the  wicked,  the  virtuous  and  the 
vicious,  the  good  and  bad  under  a  hundred  names, 
have  been  sharply  and  earnestly  discriminated  in 
every  age  and  country. 

Although  this  distinction  between  personal  good 
and  bad  has  always  been  a  fact  of  human  thought,  a 
broader  view  of  it  is  reached,  in  these  days,  through 
the  idea  of  evolution.  The  method  of  nature  being 
everywhere  selective,  growth  is  seen  to  take  place  not 
by  making  a  like  use  of  the  elements  already  existing, 
but  by  the  fostering  of  some  to  the  comparative  neg- 
lect or  suppression  of  others.  Or,  if  this  statement 
gives  too  much  the  idea  of  a  presiding  intelligence 
outside  the  process  itself,  we  may  simply  say  that 
the  functions  of  existing  elements  in  contributing  to 
further  growth  are  extremely  different,  so  much  so 
that  some  of  them  usually  appear  to  have  no  impor- 
tant function  at  all,  or  even  to  impede  the  growth, 
while  others  appear  to  be  the  very  heart  of  the  on- 
ward or  crescent  life.  This  idea  is  applicable  to 
physiological  processes,  such  as  go  on  within  our 

373 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

bodies,  to  the  development  of  species,  as  illustrated 
with  such  convincing  detail  by  Darwin,  and  to  all 
the  processes  of  thought  and  of  society ;  so  that  the 
forces  that  are  observed  in  the  present,  if  viewed  with 
reference  to  function  or  tendency,  never  appear  to  be 
on  the  same  level  of  value,  but  are  strung  along  at 
different  levels,  some  below  a  mean,  some  above  it. 
Thus  we  not  only  have  the  actual  discrimination  of 
good  and  bad  in  persons,  but  a  philosophy  which 
shows  it  as  an  incident  of  evolution,  a  reflection  in 
thought  of  the  general  movement  of  nature. 

Or,  to  regard  the  process  of  evolution  in  more  de- 
tail, we  find  degeneracy  or  inferiority  implied  in  that 
idea  of  variation  which  is  the  starting-point  of  Dar- 
winism. All  forms  of  life,  it  seems,  exhibit  varia- 
tion; that  is,  the  individuals  are  not  quite  alike 
but  differ  from  one  another  and  from  the  parents 
in  a  somewhat  random  manner,  so  that  some  are 
better  adapted  to  the  actual  conditions  of  life,  and 
some  worse.  The  change  or  development  of  a  species 
takes  place  by  the  cumulative  survival  and  multipli- 
cation, generation  after  generation,  of  fit  or  fortunate 
variations.  The  very  process  that  produces  the  fit- 
test evidently  implies  the  existence  of  the  unfit ;  and 
the  distinctly  unfit  individuals  of  any  species  may 
be  regarded  as  the  degenerate. 

It  will  not  do  to  transfer  these  ideas  too  crudely  to 
the  mental  and  social  life  of  mankind ;  but  it  will 
hardly  be  disputed  that  the  character  of  persons  ex- 
hibits variations  which  are  partly  at  least  incalculable, 

374 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

and  which  produce  on  the  one  hand  leadership  and 
genius  and  on  the  other  weakness  and  degeneracy. 
We  probably  cannot  have  the  one  without  having 
something,  at  least,  of  the  other,  though  I  believe 
that  the  variations  of  personality  are  capable,  to  a 
great  degree,  of  being  brought  under  rational  con- 
trol. 

This  truth  that  all  forms  of  deficient  humanity 
have  a  common  philosophical  aspect  is  one  reason 
for  giving  them  some  common  name,  like  degeneracy. 
Another  is  that  the  detailed  study  of  fact  more  and 
more  forces  the  conclusion  that  such  things  as  crime, 
pauperism,  idiocy,  insanity,  and  drunkenness  have,  in 
great  measure,  a  common  causation,  and  so  form, 
practically,  parts  of  a  whole.  We  see  this  in  the  study 
of  heredity,  which  shows  that  the  transmitted  taint 
commonly  manifests  itself  in  several  or  all  of  these 
forms  in  different  generations  or  individuals  of  the 
same  family  ;  and  we  see  it  in  the  study  of  social  con- 
ditions, in  the  fact  that  where  these  conditions  are 
bad,  as  in  the  slums  of  great  cities,  all  the  forms  be- 
come more  prevalent.  A  third  reason  for  the  use  of 
a  special  term  is  that  it  is  desirable  that  the  matter 
receive  more  dispassionate  study  than  formerly,  and 
this  may  possibly  be  promoted  by  the  use  of  words 
free,  so  far  as  possible,  from  irrelevant  implications. 
Many  of  the  words  in  common  use,  such  as  badness, 
wickedness,  crime  and  the  like,  reflect  particular 
views  of  the  facts,  such  as  the  religious  view  of  them 

375 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

as  righteousness  or  sin,  and  the  legal  view  as  crimi- 
nal or  innocent,  while  degeneracy  suggests  the  disin- 
terestedness of  science. 

I  do  not  much  care  to  justify  the  particular  word 
degeneracy  in  this  connection,  further  than  to  say 
that  I  know  of  none  more  convenient  or  less  objec- 
tionable. It  conies,  of  course,  from  de  and  genus 
through  degenerare,  and  seems  to  mean  primarily  the 
state  of  having  fallen  from  a  type.  It  is  not  uncom- 
mon in  English  literature,  usually  meaning  inferiority 
to  the  standard  set  by  ancestors,  as  when  we  say  a 
degenerate  age,  a  degenerate  son,  etc. ;  and  recently 
it  has  come  into  use  to  describe  any  kind  of  marked 
and  enduring  mental  defect  or  inferiority.  I  see  no 
objection  to  this  usage  unless  it  be  that  it  is  doubtful 
whether  the  mentally  or  morally  inferior  person  can 
in  all  cases  be  said  to  have  fallen  from  a  higher  state. 
This  might  be  plausibly  argued  on  both  sides,  but  it 
does  not  seem  worth  while. 

I  use  the  phrase  personal  degeneracy,  then,  to  de- 
scribe the  state  of  persons  whose  character  and  con- 
duct fall  distinctly  below  the  type  or  standard  re- 
garded as  normal  by  the  dominant  sentiment  of  the 
group.  Although  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  defi- 
nition is  a  vague  one,  it  is  not  more  so,  perhaps,  than 
most  definitions  of  mental  or  social  phenomena. 
There  is  no  sharp  criterion  of  what  is  mentally  and 
socially  up  to  par  and  what  is  not,  but  there  are 
large  and  important  classes  whose  inferiority  is  evi- 
dent, such  as  idiots,  imbeciles,  the  insane,  drunk- 

376 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

ards  and  criminals;  and  no  one  will  question  the 
importance  of  studying  the  whole  of  which  these  are 
parts. 

It  is  altogether  a  social  matter  at  bottom ;  that  is 
to  say,  degeneracy  exists  only  in  a  certain  relation 
between  a  person  and  the  rest  of  a  group.  In  so  far 
as  any  mental  or  physical  traits  constitute  it  they  do 
so  because  they  involve  unfitness  for  a  normal  social 
career,  in  which  alone  the  essence  of  the  matter  is 
found.  The  only  palpable  test  of  it — and  this  an 
uncertain  one — is  found  in  the  actual  career  of  the 
person,  and  especially  in  the  attitude  toward  him  of 
the  organized  thought  of  the  group.  We  agree  fairly 
well  upon  the  degeneracy  of  the  criminal,  largely 
because  his  abnormality  is  of  so  obvious  and  trouble- 
some a  kind  that  something  in  particular  has  to  be 
done  about  it,  and  so  he  becomes  definitely  and  for- 
mally stigmatized  by  the  organs  of  social  judgment. 
Yet  even  from  this  decisive  verdict  an  appeal  is 
successfully  made  in  some  cases  to  the  wider  and 
maturer  thought  of  mankind,  so  that  many  have  been 
executed  as  felons  who,  like  John  Brown,  are  now 
revered  as  heroes. 

In  short,  the  idea  of  wrong,  of  which  the  idea  of 
degeneracy  is  a  phase,  partakes  of  the  same  uncer- 
tainty that  belongs  to  its  antithesis,  the  idea  of  right. 
Both  are  expressions  of  an  ever-developing,  always 
selective  life,  and  share  in  the  indeterminateness  that 
necessarily  goes  with  growth.  They  assume  forms 
definite  enough  for  the  performance  of  their  momen- 

377 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tous  practical  functions,  but  always  remain  essentially 
plastic  and  variable. 

Concerning  the  causation  of  degeneracy,  we  may 
say,  as  of  every  aspect  of  personality,  that  its  roots 
are  to  be  looked  for  somewhere  in  the  mingling  of 
hereditary  and  social  factors  from  which  the  individ- 
ual life  springs.  Both  of  these  factors  exhibit  marked 
variation ;  men  differ  in  their  natural  traits  very  much 
as  other  animals  do,  and  they  also  find  themselves 
subject  to  the  varying  influences  of  a  diversified  social 
order.  The  actual  divergences  of  character  and  con- 
duct which  they  exhibit  are  due  to  the  composition  of 
these  two  variables  into  a  third  variable,  the  man 
himself. 

In  some  cases  the  hereditary  factor  is  so  clearly  defi- 
cient as  to  make  it  natural  and  justifiable  to  regard 
heredity  as  the  cause ;  in  a  much  larger  number  of 
cases  there  is  good  reason  to  think  that  social  con- 
ditions are  more  particularly  to  blame,  and  that 
the  original  hereditary  outfit  was  fairly  good.  In  a 
third  class,  the  largest,  perhaps,  of  all,  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  discriminate  between  them.  Indeed, 
it  is  always  a  loose  way  of  speaking  to  set  heredity 
and  environment  over  against  each  other  as  separable 
forces,  or  to  say  that  either  one  is  the  cause  of  char- 
acter or  of  any  personal  trait.  They  have  no  sepa- 
rate existence  after  personal  development  is  under 
way ;  each  reacts  upon  the  other,  and  every  trait  is 
due  to  their  intimate  union  and  co-operation.  All 

378 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

we  are  justified  in  saying  is  that  one  or  the  other 
may  be  so  aberrant  as  to  demand  our  special  atten- 
tion. 

Congenital  idiocy  is  regarded  as  hereditary  de- 
generacy, because  it  is  obvious  that  no  social  environ- 
ment  can  make  the  individual  other  than  deficient, 
and  we  must  work  upon  heredity  if  we  wish  to  prevent 
it.  On  the  other  hand,  when  we  find  that  certain  con- 
ditions, like  residence  in  crowded  parts  of  a  city,  are 
accompanied  by  the  appearance  of  a  large  per  cent,  of 
criminality,  among  a  population  whom  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  naturally  deficient,  we  are  justified 
in  saying  that  the  causes  of  this  degeneracy  are  social 
rather  than  hereditary.  The  fact  probably  is,  in  the 
latter  case,  that  the  criminality  is  due  to  the  con- 
junction of  degrading  surroundings  with  a  degree 
of  hereditary  deficiency  that  a  better  training  would 
have  rendered  harmless,  or  at  least  inconspicuous ; 
but,  practically,  if  we  wish  to  diminish  this  sort  of 
degeneracy,  we  must  work  upon  social  conditions. 

A  sound  mental   heredity  consists  essentially  in  / 
teachability,  a  capacity  to  learn  the  things  required 
by  the  social  order ;  and  the  congenital  idiot  is  de- 
generate by  the  hereditary  factor  alone,  because  he 
is  incapable  of  learning  these  things.     But  a  sound   ' 
heredity  is  no  safeguard  against   personal  degener- 
acy ;  if  we  have  teachability  all  turns  upon  what  is 
taught,  and  this  depends  upon  the  social  environ- 
ment.    The  very  faculties  that  lead  a  child  to  become 
good  or  moral  in  a  good  environment  may  cause  him 

379 


HUMAN  NATUEE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OEDER 

to  become  criminal  in  a  criminal  environment ;  it  is 
all  a  question  of  what  he  finds  to  learn.  It  may  be  said, 
then,  that  of  the  four  possible  combinations  between 
good  and  bad  heredity  and  good  and  bad  environ- 
ment, three — bad  heredity  with  bad  or  good  environ- 
ment, and  good  heredity  with  bad  environment — lead 
to  degeneracy.  Only  when  both  elements  are  favora- 
ble can  we  have  a  good  result.  Of  course,  by  bad 
environment  in  this  connection  must  be  understood 
bad  in  its  action  upon  this  particular  individual,  not 
as  judged  by  some  other  standard. 

As  the  social  surroundings  of  a  person  can  be 
changed,  and  his  hereditary  bias  cannot,  it  is  expe- 
dient, in  that  vast  majority  of  cases  in  which  causa- 
tion is  obscure,  to  assume  as  a  working  hypothesis 
that  the  social  factor  is  at  fault,  and  to  try  by  altering 
it  to  alter  the  person.  This  is  more  and  more  coming 
to  be  done  in  all  intelligent  treatment  of  degeneracy. 

As  a  mental  trait,  marking  a  person  off  as,  in  some 
sense,  worse  than  others  in  the  same  social  group, 
degeneracy  appears  to  consist  in  some  lack  in  the 
higher  organization  of  thought.  It  is  not  that  one 
has  the  normal  mental  outfit  plus  something  addi- 
tional, called  wrong,  crime,  sin,  madness,  or  the  like, 
but  that  he  is  in  some  way  deficient  in  the  mental 
activity  by  which  sympathy  is  created  and  by  which 
all  impulses  are  unified  with  reference  to  a  general 
life.  The  criminal  impulses,  rage,  fear,  lust,  pride, 
vanity,  covetousness,  and  so  on,  are  the  same  in  gen- 

380 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

eral  type  as  those  of  the  normal  person ;  the  main 
difference  is  that  the  criminal  lacks,  in  one  way  or 
another,  the  higher  mental  organization — a  phase  of 
the  social  organization — to  which  these  impulses 
should  be  subordinate.  It  would  not  be  very  diffi- 
cult to  take  the  seven  deadly  sins — Pride,  Envy, 
Anger,  Sloth,  Covetousness,  Gluttony,  and  Lust — and 
show  that  each  may  be  regarded  as  the  undisciplined 
manifestation  of  a  normal  or  functional  tendency. 
Indeed,  as  regards  anger  this  was  attempted  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter. 

"  To  describe  in  detail  the  different  varieties  of 
degeneracy  that  are  met  with,"  says  Dr.  Maudsley, 
"would  be  an  endless  and  barren  labor.  It  would 
be  as  tedious  as  to  attempt  to  describe  particularly 
the  exact  character  of  the  ruins  of  each  house  in  a 
city  that  had  been  destroyed  by  an  earthquake :  in 
one  place  a  great  part  of  the  house  may  be  left  stand- 
ing, in  another  place  a  wall  or  two,  and  in  another 
the  ruin  is  so  great  that  scarcely  one  stone  is  left 
upon  another."  * 

In  the   lowest    phases    mental   organization  can 
hardly  be  said  to  exist  at  all :  an  idiot  has  no  charac- 
ter, no  consistent  or  effective  individuality.     There  is 
no  unification,  and  so  no  self-control  or  stable  will ; 
action  simply  reflects  the  particular  animal  impulse 
that  is  ascendent.     Hunger,  sexual  lust,  rage,  dread, 
and,  in  somewhat  higher  grades,  a  crude,  naive  kind- 
liness, are  each  felt  and  expressed  in  the  simplest 
*  The  Pathology  of  Mind,  p.  425. 
381 


HUMAN  NATUKE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

manner  possible.  There  can,  of  course,  be  little  or 
no  true  sympathy,  and  the  unconsciousness  of  what 
is  going  on  in  the  minds  of  other  persons  prevents 
any  sense  of  decency  or  attempt  to  conform  to  social 
standards. 

In  the  higher  grades  we  may  make  the  distinction, 
already  suggested  in  speaking  of  egotism,  between 
the  unstable  and  the  rigid  varieties.  Indeed,  as  was 
intimated,  selfishness  and  degeneracy  are  of  the 
same  general  character ;  both  being  defined  socially 
by  a  falling  short  of  accepted  standards  of  conduct, 
and  mentally  by  some  lack  in  the  scope  and  organi- 
zation of  the  mind. 

There  is,  then,  one  sort  of  persons  in  whom  the 
most  conspicuous  and  troublesome  trait  is  mere  men- 
tal inconsistency  and  lack  of  character,  and  another 
who  possess  a  fair  degree,  at  least,  of  consistency  and 
unity  of  purpose,  but  whose  mental  scope  or  reach  of 
sympathy  is  so  small  that  they  have  no  adequate  re- 
lation to  the  life  about  them. 

An  outgrowing,  impressionable  sort  of  mind,  if 
deficient  in  the  power  to  work  up  its  material,  is 
necessarily  unstable  and  lacking  in  momentum  and 
definite  direction  :  and  in  the  more  marked  cases  we 
have  people  of  the  hysterical  type,  unstable  forms  of 
dementia  and  insanity,  and  impulsive  crime.  "The 
fundamental  defect  in  the  hysterical  brain,"  says  Dr. 
Dana,  "  is  that  it  is  circumscribed  in  its  associative 
functions ;  the  field  of  consciousness  is  limited  just 
as  is  the  field  of  vision.  The  mental  activity  is  cou- 

382 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

fined  to  personal  feelings,  which  are  not  regulated  by 
connotation  of  past  experiences,  hence  they  flow  over 
too  easily  into  emotional  outbursts  or  motor  parox- 
ysms. The  hysterical  person  cannot  think."  *  It  is 
evident  that  something  similar  might  be  said  of  all 
manifestations  of  instability. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  ingrowing  sort  of  mind, 
whose  tendency  is  rather  to  work  over  and  over  its 
cherished  thoughts  than  to  open  out  to  new  ones, 
may  have  a  marked  deficiency  of  sensibility  and 
breadth  of  perception.  If  so,  the  person  is  likely  to 
exhibit  some  form  of  gross  and  persistent  egotism, 
such  as  sensuality,  avaiice,  narrow  and  ruthless  am- 
bition, fanaticism,  of  a  hard,  cold  sort,  delusion  of 
greatness,  or  those  kinds  of  crime  that  result  from 
habitual  insensibility  to  social  standards  rather  than 
from  transient  impulse. 

As  conscience  is  simply  the  completest  product  of 
mental  organization,  it  will  of  course  share  in  what- 
ever defect  there  may  be  in  the  mental  life  as  a 
whole.  In  the  lower  grades  of  idiocy  we  may  assume 
that  there  is  no  system  in  the  mind  from  which  a 
conscience  could  spring.  In  a  higher  degenerate  of 
the  unstable  type,  there  is  a  conscience,  but  it  is  vacil- 
lating in  its  judgments,  transient  in  duration  and  in- 
effectual in  control,  proportionally  to  the  mental  dis- 
integration which  it  reflects.  We  all,  probably,  can 
think  of  people  conspicuously  lacking  in  self-control, 
*  C.  L.  Dana,  Nervous  Diseases,  p.  425. 
383 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  it  will  perhaps  be  evident,  when  we  reflect  upon 
them,  that  their  consciences  are  of  this  sort.  The 
voice  of  conscience,  with  them,  is  certain  to  be  chiefly 
an  echo  of  temporary  emotions,  because  a  synthesis 
embracing  long  periods  of  time  is  beyond  their 
range ;  it  is  frequently  inaudible,  on  account  of  their 
being  engrossed  by  passing  impulses,  and  their  con- 
duct is  largely  without  any  rational  control  at  all. 
They  are  likely  to  suffer  sharp  and  frequent  attacks 
of  remorse,  on  account  of  failure  to  live  up  to  their 
standards,  but  it  would  seem  that  the  wounds  do  not 
go  very  deep  as  a  rule,  but  share  in  the  general  su- 
perficiality of  their  lives.  People  of  this  sort,  if  not 
too  far  gone  in  weakness,  are  probably  the  ones  who 
profit  most  by  punishment,  because  they  are  helped 
by  the  sharp  and  definite  pain  which  it  associates 
with  acts  that  they  recognize  as  wrong,  but  cannot 
keep  from  doing  without  a  vivid  emotional  deterrent. 
They  are  also  the  ones  who,  in  their  eagerness  to  es- 
cape from  the  pains  of  fluctuation  and  inconsistency, 
are  most  prone  to  submit  blindly  to  some  external 
and  dogmatic  authority.  Unable  to  rule  themselves, 
they  crave  a  master,  and  if  he  only  is  a  master,  that 
is,  one  capable  of  grasping  and  dominating  the  emo- 
tions by  which  they  are  swayed,  they  will  often  cleave 
to  him  and  kiss  the  rod. 

With  those  whose  defect  is  rigidity  rather  than  in- 
stability, conscience  may  exist  and  may  control  the 
life ;  the  trouble  with  it  is,  that  it  is  not  in  key  with 
the  consciences  of  other  people.  There  is  an  original 

384 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

poverty  of  the  impulses  that  extends  to  any  result 
that  can  be  worked  out  of  them.  It  may  appear 
startling  to  some  to  assert  that  conscience  may  dic- 
tate the  wrong,  but  such  is  quite  clearly  the  fact,  if 
we  identify  the  right  with  some  standard  of  conduct 
accepted  among  people  of  broad  sympathies.  Con- 
science is  the  only  possible  moral  guide — any  exter- 
nal authority  can  work  morally  upon  us  only  through 
conscience — but  it  always  partakes  of  the  limitations 
of  one's  character,  and  so  far  as  that  is  degenerate 
the  idea  of  right  is  degenerate  also.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  very  worst  men  of  the  hard,  narrow,  fanatical, 
or  brutal  sorts,  often  live  at  peace  with  their  con- 
sciences. I  feel  sure  that  anyone  who  reflects  imagi- 
natively upon  the  characters  of  people  he  has  known 
of  this  sort  will  agree  that  such  is  the  case.  A  bad 
conscience  implies  mental  division,  inconsistency  be- 
tween thought  and  deed,  and  men  of  this  sort  are 
often  quite  at  one  with  themselves.  The  usurer  who 
grinds  the  faces  of  the  poor,  the  unscrupulous  specu- 
lator who  causes  the  ruin  of  innocent  investors  to  ag- 
grandize himself,  the  fanatical  anarchist  who  stabs  a 
king  or  shoots  a  president,  the  Kentucky  mountain- 
eer who  regards  murderous  revenge  as  a  duty,  the 
assaulter  who  causes  pictures  commemorative  of  his 
crimes  to  be  tattooed  on  his  skin,  are  diverse  examples 
of  wrong-doers  whose  consciences  not  only  do  not 
punish,  but  often  instigate  their  ill  deeds. 

The  idea,  cherished  by  some,  that  crime  or  wrong 
of  any  sort  is  invariably  pursued  by  remorse,  arises 

385 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

from  the  natural  but  mistaken  assumption  that  all 
other  people  have  consciences  similar  to  our  own. 
The  man  of  sensitive  temperament  and  refined  habit 
of  thought  feels  that  he  would  suffer  remorse  if  he 
had  done  the  deed,  and  supposes  that  the  same 
must  be  the  case  with  the  perpetrator.  On  the 
contrary,  it  seems  likely  that  only  a  very  small 
proportion  of  those  whom  the  higher  moral  senti- 
ment regards  as  wrong-doers  suffer  much  from  the 
pricks  of  conscience.  If  the  general  tenor  of  a 
man's  life  is  high,  and  the  act  is  the  fearful  out- 
come of  a  moment  of  passion,  as  is  often  the  case 
with  unpremeditated  murder,  he  will  suffer,  but  if 
his  life  is  all  of  a  piece,  he  will  not.  All  authorities 
agree  that  the  mass  of  criminals,  and  the  same  is 
clearly  true  of  ill- doers  within  the  law,  have  a  habit 
of  mind  of  which  the  ill  deed  is  the  logical  outcome, 
so  that  there  is  nothing  sudden  or  catastrophic  about 
it.  Of  course,  if  we  apply  the  word  conscience  only 
to  the  mental  synthesis  of  a  mind  rich  in  higher  senti- 
ments, then  such  people  have  no  consciences,  but  it 
seems  a  broader  view  of  the  matter  to  say  that  they 
Jiave  a  conscience,  in  so  far  as  they  have  mental  unity, 
but  that  it  reflects  the  general  narrowness  and  perver- 
sion of  their  lives.  In  fact,  people  of  this  description 
usually,  if  not  always,  have  standards  of  their  own, 
some  sort  of  honor  among  thieves,  which  they  will 
not  transgress,  or  which,  if  transgressed,  cause  re- 
morse. It  is  impossible  that  mental  organization 
should  not  produce  a  moral  synthesis  of  some  sort. 

386 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

There  is  nothing  in  this  way  of  conceiving  degen- 
eracy which  tends  to  break  down  the  practical  dis- 
tinctions among  the  various  forms  of  it,  as,  for  in- 
stance, that  between  crime  and  insanity.  Though 
the  line  between  these  two  is  arbitrary  and  uncertain, 
as  must  always  be  the  case  in  the  classification  of 
mental  facts,  and  as  is  confessed  by  the  existence  of 
a  class  called  the  criminal  insane,  yet  the  distinction 
itself  and  the  difference  in  treatment  associated  with 
it  are  sound  enough  in  a  general  way. 

The  contrast  between  our  attitudes  toward  crime 
and  toward  insanity  is  primarily  a  matter  of  personal 
idea  and  impulse.  We  understand  the  criminal  act, 
or  think  we  do,  and  we  feel  toward  it  resentment,  or 
hostile  sympathy ;  while  we  do  not  understand  the 
insane  act,  and  so  do  not  resent  it,  but  regard  it  with 
pity,  curiosity,  or  disgust.  If  one  man  strikes  down 
another  to  rob  him,  or  in  revenge,  we  can  imagine  the 
offender's  state  of  mind,  his  motive  lives  in  our 
thought  and  is  condemned  by  conscience  precisely  as 
if  we  thought  of  doing  the  act  ourselves.  Indeed,  to 
understand  an  act  is  to  think  of  doing  it  ourselves. 
But,  if  it  is  done  for  no  reason  that  we  can  compre- 
hend, we  do  not  imagine,  do  not  get  a  personal  im- 
pression of  the  case  at  all,  but  have  to  think  of  it  as 
merely  mechanical.  It  is  the  same  sort  of  difference 
as  that  between  a  person  who  injures  us  accidentally 
and  one  who  does  it  "  on  purpose." 

Secondarily,  it  is  a  matter  of  expediency.  We  feel 
that  the  act  which  we  can  imagine  ourselves  doing 

387 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

ought  to  be  punished,  because  we  perceive  by  our 
own  sympathy  with  it  that  more  of  this  sort  of  thing 
is  likely  to  take  place  if  it  is  not  put  down.  We  want 
the  house-breaker  to  be  stigmatized,  disgraced,  and 
imprisoned,  because  we  feel  that,  if  this  is  not  done, 
he  and  others  will  be  encouraged  to  more  house- 
breaking;  but  we  feel  only  pity  for  the  man  who 
thinks  he  is  Julius  Caesar,  because  we  suppose  there 
is  nothing  to  be  feared  either  from  him  or  his  exam- 
ple. This  practical  basis  of  the  distinction  expresses 
itself  in  the  general,  and  I  think  justifiable,  reluc- 
tance to  apply  the  name  and  treatment  of  insanity  to 
behavior  which  seems  likely  to  be  imitated.  It  is 
felt  that  whatever  may  be  the  mental  state  of  the 
man  who  commits  an  act  of  violence  or  fraud,  it  is 
wholesome  that  people  in  general,  who  draw  no  fine 
distinctions,  but  judge  others  by  themselves,  should 
be  taught  by  example  that  such  conduct  is  followed 
by  moral  and  legal  penalties.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  the  behavior  is  so  evidently  remote  from  ordi- 
nary habits  of  thought  that  it  can  be  a  matter  only 
of  pity  or  curiosity,  there  is  no  occasion  to  do  any- 
thing more  than  the  good  of  the  person  affected 
seems  to  require. 

The  same  analysis  applies  to  the  whole  question  of 
responsibility  or  irresponsibility.  It  is  a  matter  of 
imaginative  contact  and  personal  idea.  To  hold  a 
man  responsible,  is  to  imagine  him  as  a  man  like 
ourselves,  having  similar  impulses  but  failing  to  con- 
trol them  as  we  do,  or  at  least  as  we  feel  we  ought  to 

388 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

do.  We  think  of  doing  as  he  does,  find  it  Avrong, 
and  impute  the  wrong  to  him.  The  irresponsible 
person  is  one  who  is  looked  upon  as  a  different  sort 
of  being,  not  human  with  reference  to  the  conduct  in 
question,  not  imaginable,  not  near  enough  to  us  to  be 
the  object  of  hostile  sentiment.  We  blame  the  for- 
mer ;  that  is,  we  visit  him  with  a  sympathetic  resent- 
ment ;  we  condemn  that  part  of  ourselves  that  we 
find  in  him.  But  in  the  latter  we  do  not  find  our- 
selves at  all 

It  is  worth  noting  in  this  connection,  that  we  could 
not  altogether  cease  to  blame  others  without  ceasing 
to  blame  ourselves,  which  would  mean  moral  apathy. 
It  is  sometimes  thought  that  the  cool  analysis  of  such 
questions  as  this  tends  toward  indifferentism  ;  but  I 
do  not  see  that  this  is  the  case.  The  social  psychol- 
ogist finds  in  moral  sentiment  a  central  and  momen- 
tous fact  of  human  life,  and  if  perchance  he  does  not 
himself  feel  it  very  vividly,  he  should  have  the  candor 
to  confess  himself  so  much  the  less  a  man.  Indeed, 
if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  an  indifferentist,  in  the 
sense  of  one  who  does  not  feel  any  cogency  in  moral 
sentiment,  he  must  be  quite  unsuited  to  the  pursuit 
of  social  or  moral  science,  because  he  lacks  power 
to  sympathize  with,  and  so  observe,  the  facts  upon 
which  this  sort  of  science  must  be  based. 

I  do  not  purpose  to  give  this  discussion  a  practical 
turn  by  entering  into  the  details  of  the  treatment  of 
various  forms  of  degeneracy;  but  it  may  help  to 

389 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

show  the  bearing  of  our  general  view,  if  I  point  out 
in  brief  the  line  of  procedure  which  common-sense 
would  seem  to  call  for.  This  procedure  naturally 
divides  itself  into  prevention,  reform  or  cure,  and 
isolation,  according  to  the  stage  of  development 
which  the  evil  has  reached. 

Everything  which  acts  in  a  favorable  manner  upon 
either  the  hereditary  or  the  social  factor  in  life  is 
more  or  less  preventive  of  degeneracy,  and  of  course 
influences  of  this  general  sort  are  of  far  more  impor- 
tance as  a  whole  than  any  more  particular  measures. 
Under  the  head  of  prevention  would  also  come  pun- 
ishment, disgrace,  and  the  like — everything  in  the 
treatment  of  criminals,  paupers,  and  other  special 
classes  which  is  designed  to  impress  the  minds  of 
the  rest  of  the  people,  and  to  check  the  degenerate 
tendencies  possibly  existing  among  them.  Although 
it  is  now  thought  that  the  efficacy  of  these  deterrent 
influences,  in  the  case  of  crime  at  least,  is  less  than  was 
formerly  supposed,  still  it  is  by  no  means  desirable 
that  the  attempt  to  exert  them  should  be  abandoned. 

If  degenerate  tendencies  actually  manifest  them- 
selves, the  main  thing  to  be  done  is  to  take  note  of 
them  as  early  in  the  individual's  life  as  possible,  and 
to  attempt  to  counteract  them  by  a  suitable  change 
in  the  social  environment.  I  need  hardly  point  out 
that  it  is  now  believed  that  such  counteraction  is 
much  more  practicable  than  was  formerly  supposed, 
or  mention  that  many  beneficent  institutions  and 
other  enterprises  exist  which  aim  to  secure  it. 

390 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

And  if,  as  must  always  be  the  fact  in  a  consider- 
able proportion  of  cases,  the  person  remains  so  dis- 
tinctly and  persistently  below  the  standard  of  char- 
acter and  conduct  that  it  is  clearly  inexpedient  to 
leave  him  at  large,  the  rational  treatment  of  him  is 
evidently  a  decent  isolation,  which  shall  prevent  him 
from  propagating  his  degenerate  traits  through  either 
heredity  or  social  influence. 


391 


CHAPTER  XII 

FREEDOM 

THE  MEANING  OF  FREEDOM — FREEDOM  AND  DISCIPLINE — FREEDOM 
AS  A  PHASE  OF  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER — FREEDOM  INVOLVES  INCI- 
DENTAL  STRAIN  AND  DEGENERACY. 

GOETHE  remarks  in  his  Autobiography  *  that  the 
word  freedom  has  so  fair  a  sound  that  we  cannot 
do  without  it  even  though  it  designate  an  error. 
Certainly  it  is  a  word  inseparable  from  our  higher 
sentiments,  and  if,  in  its  popular  use  at  the  present 
day,  it  has  no  precise  meaning,  there  is  so  much  the 
more  reason  why  we  should  try  to  give  it  one,  and  to 
continue  its  use  as  a  symbol  of  something  that  man- 
kind cherishes  and  strives  for. 

The  common  notion  of  freedom  is  negative,  that  is, 
it  is  a  notion  of  the  absence  of  constraint.  Starting 
with  the  popular  individualistic  view  of  things,  the 
social  order  is  thought  of  as  something  apart  from, 
and  more  or  less  a  hinderance  to,  a  man's  natural  de- 
velopment. There  is  an  assumption  that  an  ordi- 
nary person  is  self-sufficient  in  most  respects,  and 
will  do  very  well  if  he  is  only  left  alone.  But  there 
is,  of  course,  no  such  thing  as  the  absence  of  re- 
straint, in  the  sense  of  social  limitations ;  man  has  no 
*  Aus  Meinem  Leben,  Book  XI. 
392 


FKEEDOM 

existence  apart  from  a  social  order,  and  can  develop 
his  personality  only  through  the  social  order,  and  in 
the  same  degree  that  it  is  developed.  A  freedom 
consisting  in  the  removal  of  limiting  conditions  is 
inconceivable.  If  the  word  is  to  have  any  definite 
meaning  in  sociology,  it  must  therefore  be  separated 
from  the  idea  of  a  fundamental  opposition  between 
society  and  the  individual,  and  made  to  signify  some- 
thing that  is  both  individual  and  social.  To  do  this 
it  is  not  necessary  to  do  any  great  violence  to  ac- 
cepted ideas  of  a  practical  sort ;  since  it  is  rather  in 
theory  than  in  application  that  the  popular  view  is 
objectionable.  A  sociological  interpretation  of  free- 
dom should  take  away  nothing  worth  keeping  froM 
our  traditional  conception  of  it,  and  may  add  some- 
thing in  the  way  of  breadth,  clearness,  and  produc- 
tiveness. 

The  definition  of  freedom  naturally  arising  from 
the  chapters  that  have  gone  before  is  perhaps  this  : 
that  it  is  opportunity  for  right  development,  for  de-  , 
velopment  in  accordance  with  the  progressive  ideal  of 
life  that  we  have  in  conscience.  A  child  comes  into 
the  world  with  an  outfit  of  vague  tendencies,  for  all 
definite  unfolding  of  which  he  is  dependent  upon 
social  conditions.  If  cast  away  alone  on  a  desert 
island  he  would,  supposing  that  he  succeeded  in  liv- 
ing at  all,  never  attain  a  real  humanity,  would  never 
know  speech,  or  social  sentiment,  or  any  complex 
thought.  On  the  other  hand,  if  all  his  surroundings 
are  from  the  first  such  as  to  favor  the  enlargement 

393 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  enrichment  of  his  life,  he  may  attain  the  fullest 
development  possible  to  him  in  the  actual  state  of 
the  world.  In  so  far  as  the  social  conditions  have 
this  favoring  action  upon  him  he  may  be  said  to  be 
free.  And  so  every  person,  at  every  stage  of  his 
growth,  is  free  or  unfree  in  proportion  as  he  does  or 
does  not  find  himself  in  the  midst  of  conditions  con- 
ducive to  full  and  harmonious  personal  development. 
Thinking  in  this  way  we  do  not  regard  the  individual 
as  separable  from  the  social  order  as  a  whole,  but  we 
do  regard  him  as  capable  of  occupying  any  one  of 
an  indefinite  number  of  positions  within  that  order, 
some  of  them  more  suitable  to  him  than  others. 

No  doubt  there  are  elements  of  vagueness  in  this 
conception.  What  is  full  and  harmonious  personal 
development  ?  What  is  the  right,  the  opportunity 
to  achieve  which  is  freedom  ?  The  possibilities  of 
development  are  infinitely  various,  and  unimaginable 
until  they  begin  to  be  realized,  so  that  it  would  ap- 
pear that  our  notion  gives  us  nothing  definite  to  go 
by  after  all.  This  is  largely  true :  development  can- 
not be  defined,  either  for  the  race  or  for  individuals, 
but  is  and  must  remain  an  ideal,  of  which  we  can  get 
only  partial  and  shifting  glimpses.  In  fact,  we  should 
cease  to  think  of  freedom  as  something  definite  and 
final,  that  can  be  grasped  and  held  fast  once  for  all, 
and  learn  to  regard  it  as  a  line  of  advance,  something 
progressively  appearing  out  of  the  invisible  and  de- 
fining itself,  like  the  forms  of  a  mountain  up  which 
one  is  climbing  in  a  mist.  This  vagueness  and  in- 

394 


FREEDOM 

completeness  are  only  what  we  meet  in  every  direc- 
tion when  we  attempt  to  define  our  ideals.  What  is 
progress  ?  What  is  right  ?  What  is  beauty  ?  What 
is  truth  ?  The  endeavor  to  produce  unmistakable  and 
final  definitions  of  these  things  is  now,  I  suppose, 
given  up,  and  we  have  come  to  recognize  that  the 
good,  in  all  its  forms,  is  evolved  rather  than  achieved, 
is  a  process  rather  than  a  state. 

The  best  definition  of  freedom  is  perhaps  nothing 
other  than  the  most  helpful  way  of  thinking  about 
it ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  most  helpful  way  of 
thinking  about  it  is  to  regard  it  in  the  light  of  the 
contrast  between  what  a  man  is  and  what  he  might 
be,  as  our  experience  of  life  enables  us  to  imagine 
the  two  states.  Ideas  of  this  sort  are  suggested  by 
defining  freedom  as  opportunity,  and  their  tendency 
is  to  stimulate  and  direct  practical  endeavor.  If  the 
word  helps  us  to  realize,  for  instance,  that  it  is  pos- 
sible to  make  healthy,  intelligent,  and  hopeful  chil- 
dren out  of  those  that  are  now  sickly,  dull,  and  un- 
happy, so  much  the  better.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
definition  of  it  as  letting  people  alone,  well  enough 
suited,  perhaps,  to  an  over-governed  state  of  society, 
does  not  seem  especially  pertinent  to  our  time  and 
country. 

We  have  always  been  taught  by  philosophy  that 
the  various  forms  of  the  good  were  merely  different 
views  of  the  same  thing,  and  this  idea  is  certainly 
applicable  to  such  notions  as  those  of  freedom,  prog- 
ress, and  right.  Thus  freedom  may  be  regarded  as 

395 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

merely  the  individual  aspect  of  progress,  the  two  be- 
ing related  as  the  individual  and  the  social  order 
were  asserted  to  be  in  the  first  chapter,  and  no  more 
distinct  or  separable.  If  instead  of  contrasting  what 
a  particular  man  is  with  what  he  might  be,  we  do  the 
same  for  mankind  as  a  whole,  we  have  the  notion  of 
progress.  Progress  which  does  not  involve  liberation 
is  evidently  no  progress  at  all;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  freedom  that  is  not  part  of  the  general  on- 
ward movement  of  society  is  not  free  in  the  largest 
sense.  Again,  any  practicable  idea  of  freedom  must 
connect  it  with  some  standard  of  right,  in  which,  like 
opposing  claims  in  a  clearing-house,  the  divergent 
tendencies  of  each  person,  and  of  different  persons, 
are  disciplined  and  reconciled.  The  wrong  is  the 
unfree ;  it  is  that  which  tends,  on  the  whole,  to  re- 
strict personal  development.  It  is  no  contribution 
to  freedom  to  turn  loose  the  insane  or  the  criminal, 
or  to  allow  children  to  run  on  the  streets  instead  of 
going  to  school.  The  only  test  of  all  these  things — 
of  right,  freedom,  progress,  and  the  like — is  the  in- 
structed conscience ;  just  as  the  only  test  of  beauty 
is  a  trained  aesthetic  sense,  which  is  a  mental  con- 
clusion of  much  the  same  sort  as  conscience. 

So  far  as  discipline  is  concerned,  freedom  means 
not  its  absence  but  the  use  of  higher  and  more 
rational  forms  as  contrasted  with  those  that  are  lower 
or  less  rational.  A  free  discipline  controls  the  in- 
dividual by  appealing  to  his  reason  and  conscience, 

396 


FREEDOM 

and  therefore  to  his  self-respect;  while  an  unfree 
control  works  upon  some  lower  phase  of  the  mind, 
and  so  tends  to  degrade  him.  It  is  freedom  to  be 
disciplined  in  as  rational  a  manner  as  you  are  fit  for. 
Thus  freedom  is  relative  to  the  particular  persons 
and  states  who  are  to  enjoy  it,  some  individuals 
within  any  society,  and  some  societies  as  wholes, 
being  capable  of  a  higher  sort  of  response  than 
others.  In  the  family,  it  implies  the  substitution, 
so  far  as  practicable,  of  familiarity  and  moral  suasion 
for  distance  and  the  rod ;  in  government  the  growth  of 
public  opinion  and  education  as  compared  with  autoc- 
racy and  the  military  and  police  functions;  in  the 
church,  the  decline  of  dogma,  form,  the  fear  of  hell  and 
hypnotic  conversion,  relatively  to  intelligence,  sym- 
pathy, and  good  works.  But  any  relaxation  of  lower 
forms  of  discipline  which  is  not  supplied  by  higher, 
which  tends,  on  the  whole,  to  confusion  rather  than 
reorganization,  is  not  in  the  way  of  real  freedom. 
The  question  what  this  is  is  always  one  that  is 
relative  to  the  actual  situation,  never  one  that  can  be 
absolutely  or  abstractly  answered.  Freedom  can  be 
increased  only  in  connection  with  the  increase  of 
sympathy,  intelligence,  and  self-control  in  individuals. 

The  social  order  is  antithetical  to  freedom  only  in 
so  far  as  it  is  a  bad  one.  Freedom  can  exist  only  in 
and  through  a  social  order,  and  must  be  increased  by 
all  the  healthy  growth  of  the  latter.  It  is  only  in  a 
large  and  complex  social  system  that  any  advanced 

397 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

degree  of  it  is  possible,  because  nothing  else  can 
supply  the  multifarious  opportunities  by  means  of 
which  all  sorts  of  persons  can  work  out  a  congenial 
development  through  the  choice  of  influences. 

In  so  far  as  we  have  freedom  in  the  United  States  at 
the  present  time,  in  what  does  it  consist  ?  Evidently, 
it  seems  to  me,  in  the  access  to  a  great  number  and 
variety  of  influences  by  whose  progressive  selection 
and  assimilation  a  child  may  become,  within  vague 
limits  set  by  the  general  state  of  our  society,  the  best 
that  he  is  naturally  fitted  to  become.  It  consists,  to 
begin  with  infancy,  in  a  good  family  life,  in  intel- 
ligent nurture  and  training,  adapted  to  the  special 
traits  of  character  which  every  child  manifests  from 
the  first  week  of  life.  Then  it  involves  good  schooling, 
admitting  the  child  through  books  and  teachers  to  a 
rich  selection  from  the  accumulated  influences  of  the 
best  minds  of  the  past.  Free  technical  and  profes- 
sional education,  so  far  as  it  exists,  contributes  to  it, 
also  the  facility  of  travel,  bringing  him  in  contact 
with  significant  persons  from  all  over  the  world ; 
public  libraries,  magazines,  good  newspapers,  and  so 
on.  Whatever  enlarges  his  field  of  selection  without 
permanently  confusing  him  adds  to  his  liberty.  In 
fact,  institutions — government,  churches,  industries, 
and  the  like — have  properly  no  other  function  than 
to  contribute  to  human  freedom ;  and  in  so  far  as  they 
fail,  on  the  whole,  to  perform  this  function,  they  are 
wrong  and  need  reconstruction. 

Although  a  high  degree  of  freedom  can  exist  only 
398 


FKEEDOM 

through  a  complex  social  order,  it  by  no  means  fol- 
lows that  every  complex  social  order  is  free.  On  the 
contrary,  it  has  more  often  been  true  in  the  past  that 
very  large  and  intricately  organized  states,  like  the 
Roman  Empire,  were  constructed  on  a  comparatively 
mechanical  or  unfree  principle.  And  in  our  own  time 
a  vast  and  complex  empire,  like  Russia  or  China,  may 
be  less  free  than  the  simplest  English-speaking  col- 
ony. There  are  serious  objections  to  identifying 
progress,  as  Herbert  Spencer  sometimes  appears  to 
do,  with  the  mere  differentiation  and  co-ordination  of 
social  functions.  But  the  example  of  the  United 
States,  which  is  perhaps  on  the  whole  the  most  in- 
tricately differentiated  and  co-ordinated  state  that 
ever  existed,  shows  that  complexity  is  not  inconsist- 
ent with  freedom.  To  enter  fully  into  this  matter 
would  require  a  more  careful  examination  of  the 
institutional  aspect  of  life  than  I  wish  to  undertake 
at  present ;  but  I  hold  that  the  possibility  of  organ- 
izing large  and  complex  societies  on  a  free  principle 
depends  upon  the  quickness  and  facility  of  communi- 
cation, and  so  has  come  to  exist  only  in  recent  times. 
The  great  states  of  earlier  history  were  necessarily 
somewhat  mechanical  in  structure. 

It  happens  from  time  to  time  in  every  complex  and 
active  society,  that  certain  persons  feel  the  com- 
plexity and  insistence  as  a  tangle,  and  seek  freedom 
in  retirement,  as  Thoreau  sought  it  at  Walden  Pond. 
They  do  not,  however,  in  this  manner  escape  from 
the  social  institutions  of  their  time,  nor  do  they 

399 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  OKDER 

really  mean  to  do  so ;  what  they  gain,  if  they  are  suc- 
cessful, is  a  saner  relation  to  them.  Thoreau  in  his 
hut  remained  as  truly  a  member  of  society,  as  de- 
pendent for  suggestion  upon  his  books,  his  friends, 
and  his  personal  memories,  and  upon  verbal  expres- 
sion for  his  sense  of  self,  as  did  Emerson  in  Concord 
or  Lowell  in  Cambridge ;  and  I  imagine  that  if  he 
had  cared  to  discuss  the  matter  he  would  have  ad- 
mitted that  this  was  the  case.  Indeed,  the  idea  of 
Thoreau  as  a  recluse  was  not,  I  think,  his  own  idea, 
but  has  been  attached  to  him  by  superficial  observers 
of  his  life.  Although  he  was  a  dissenter  from  the 
state  and  the  church  of  his  time,  his  career  would 
have  been  impossible  without  those  institutions, 
without  Harvard  College,  for  instance,  which  was 
a  joint  product  of  the  two.  He  worked  out  his 
personal  development  through  congenial  influences 
selected  from  the  life  of  his  time,  very  much  as  others 
do.  He  simply  had  peculiar  tendencies  which  he 
developed  in  a  peculiar  way,  especially  by  avoiding 
a  gregarious  mode  of  life  unsuited  to  his  tempera- 
ment. He  was  free  through  the  social  order,  not 
outside  of  it,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Edward 
Fitzgerald  and  other  seclusive  spirits.  No  doubt 
the  commonplace  life  of  the  day  is  a  sort  of  slavery 
for  many  sensitive  minds  that  have  not,  like  these, 
the  resolution  to  escape  from  it  into  a  calmer  and 
broader  atmosphere. 

Since  freedom  is  not  a  fixed  thing   that  can  be 
grasped  and  held  once  for  all,  but  a  growth,  any  par- 

400 


FREEDOM 

ticular  society,  such  as  our  own,  always  appears  partly 
free  and  partly  unfree.  In  so  far  as  it  favors,  in 
every  child,  the  development  of  his  highest  possibili- 
ties, it  is  free,  but  where  it  falls  short  of  this  it  is 
not.  So  far  as  children  are  ill-nurtured  or  ill-taught, 
as  family  training  is  bad,  the  schools  inefficient,  the 
local  government  ill-administered,  public  libraries 
lacking,  or  private  associations  for  various  sorts  of 
culture  deficient,  in  so  far  the  people  are  unfree.  A 
child  born  in  a  slum,  brought  up  in  a  demoralized 
family,  and  put  at  some  confining  and  mentally 
deadening  work  when  ten  or  twelve  years  old,  is  no 
more  free  to  be  healthy,  wise,  and  moral  than  a  Chi- 
nese child  is  free  to  read  Shakespeare.  Every  social 
ill  involves  the  enslavement  of  individuals. 

This  idea  of  freedom  is  quite  in  accord  with  a  gen- 
eral, though  vague,  sentiment  among  us ;  it  is  an  idea 
of  fair  play,  of  giving  everyone  a  chance ;  and  nothing 
arouses  more  general  and  active  indignation  among 
our  people  than  the  belief  that  someone  or  some 
class  is  not  getting  a  fair  chance.  There  seems,  how- 
ever, to  be  too  great  complacency  in  the  way  in  which 
the  present  state  of  things  is  interpreted,  a  tendency 
to  assume  that  freedom  has  been  achieved  once  for 
all  by  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  popular 
suffrage,  and  that  little  remains  but  to  let  each  person 
realize  the  general  blessing  to  the  best  of  his  ability. 
It  is  well  to  recognize  that  the  freedom  which  we 
nominally  worship  is  never  more  than  partly  achieved, 
and  is  every  day  threatened  by  new  encroachments, 

401 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  the  right  to  vote  is  only  one  phase  of  it,  and 
possibly,  under  present  conditions,  not  the  most  im- 
portant phase,  and  that  we  can  maintain  and  increase 
it  only  by  a  sober  and  determined  application  of  our 
best  thought  and  endeavor.  Those  lines  of  Lowell's 
"  Commemoration  Ode  "  are  always  applicable : 

" — the  soft  Ideal  that  we  wooed 
Confronts  us  fiercely,  foe-beset,  pursued, 
And  cries  reproachful :  Was  it  then  my  praise, 
And  not  myself  was  loved  ?    Prove  now  thy  truth. 
I  claim  of  thee  the  promise  of  thy  youth." 

In  our  view  of  freedom  we  have  a  right  to  survey 
all  times  and  countries  and  from  them  form  for  our 
own  social  order  an  ideal  condition,  which  shall  offer 
to  each  individual  all  the  encouragements  to  growth 
and  culture  that  the  world  has  ever  or  anywhere  en- 
joyed. Any  narrowness  or  lack  of  symmetry  in  life 
in  general  is  reflected  in  the  contraction  or  warping 
of  personal  development,  and  so  constitutes  a  lack  of 
freedom.  The  social  order  should  not  exaggerate  one 
or  a  few  aspects  of  human  nature  at  the  expense  of 
others,  but  extend  its  invitations  to  all  our  higher 
tendencies.  Thus  the  excessive  preoccupation  of  the 
nineteenth  century  with  material  production  and 
physical  science  may  be  regarded  as  a  partial  enslave- 
ment of  the  spiritual  and  aesthetic  sides  of  humanity, 
from  which  we  are  now  struggling  to  escape.  The 
freedom  of  the  future  must,  it  would  seem,  call  more 
and  more  for  a  various,  rich,  and  tolerant  environ- 
ment, in  which  all  sorts  of  persons  may  build  them- 

402 


FREEDOM 

selves  up  by  selective  development.  The  clay  for  any 
sort  of  dogmatism  and  coercive  uniformity  appears  to 
be  past,  and  it  will  be  practicable  to  leave  people 
more  and  more  to  control  by  a  conscience  reflecting 
the  moral  opinion  of  the  group  to  which  their  incli- 
nation and  capacity  attach  them. 

The  substitution  of  higher  forms  of  control  for 
lower,  the  offering  more  alternatives  and  trusting  the 
mind  to  make  a  right  selection,  involves,  of  course, 
an  increased  moral  strain  upon  individuals.  Now 
this  increase  of  moral  strain  is  not  in  all  cases  exactly 
proportioned  to  the  ability  to  bear  it  well ;  and  when 
it  is  not  well  borne  the  effect  upon  character  is  more 
or  less  destructive,  so  that  something  in  the  way  of 
degeneracy  results. 

Consequently  every  general  increase  of  freedom  is 
accompanied  by  some  degeneracy,  attributable  to  the 
same  causes  as  the  freedom.  This  is  very  plainly  to 
be  seen  at  the  present  time,  which  is  one,  on  the 
whole,  of  rapid  increase  of  freedom.  Family  life 
and  the  condition  of  women  and  children  have  been 
growing  freer  and  better,  but  along  with  this  we 
have  the  increase  of  divorce  and  of  spoiled  children. 
Democracy  in  the  state  has  its  own  peculiar  evils, 
as  we  all  know ;  and  in  the  church  the  decay  of  dog- 
matism and  unreasoning  faith,  a  moral  advance  on 
the  whole,  has  nevertheless  caused  a  good  many 
moral  failures.  In  much  the  same  way  the  enfran- 
chisement of  the  negroes  is  believed  to  have  caused 

403 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

an  increase  of  insanity  among  them,  and  the  growth 
of  suicide  in  all  countries  seems  to  be  due  in  part  to 
the  strain  of  a  more  complex  society.  It  is  not  true, 
exactly,  that  freedom  itself  causes  degeneracy,  be- 
cause if  one  is  subjected  to  more  strain  than  is  good 
for  him  his  real  freedom  is  rather  contracted  than 
enlarged,  but  it  should  rather  be  said  that  any  move- 
ment which  has  increase  of  freedom  for  its  general 
effect  can  never  be  so  regulated  as  to  have  only  this 
effect,  but  is  sura  to  act  upon  some  in  an  opposite 
manner. 

Nor  is  it  reasonable  to  sit  back  and  say  that  this 
incidental  demoralization  is  inevitable,  a  fixed  price 
of  progress.  On  the  contrary,  although  it  can  never 
be  altogether  dispensed  with,  it  can  be  indefinitely 
reduced,  and  every  social  institution  or  influence  that 
tends  to  adapt  the  stress  of  civilization  to  the  strength 
of  the  individual  does  reduce  it  in  some  measure. 


404 


INDEX 


ADOLESCENCE,  the  self  in,  169 

Affectation,  173  ff,  330 

Altruism,  4,  90 ;  in  relation  to  ego- 
ism, 92  ff,  115, 188  ff,  344  ff 

Ambition,  275  f 

Americanism,  unconscious,  36 

Anger,  development  of,  233  ff ;  ani- 
mal, 240 

Anglo-Saxons,cantankerousnessof, 
268 ;  idealism  of,  288 

Antipathy,  233  ff 

Appreciation,  necessary  to  produc- 
tion, 59 

Art,  creative  impulse  in,  57  ;  per- 
sonal symbols  in,  71  ff ;  mental 
life  a  work  of,  123  f ;  plastic, 
mystery  in,  316  f ;  as  idealization, 
363 

Ascendency,  personal,  283-325 

Asceticism,  154,  223 

Augustine,  St.,  218 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  on  freedom  of 
thought,  35  ;  self -feeling  of,  218 

Author,  an,  as  leader,  303  ff 

Authority,  personal,  in  morals, 
353  ff,  384.  See  also  Leadership 

BALDWIN,  PROF.  J.  M. ,  15 ;  on 
social  persons,  90  ;  176,  271,  286 

Bastien-Lepage,  355 

Belief,  ascendency  of,  310  f,  317  f 

Beowulf,  on  honor,  209  f 

Bismarck,  254  ;  ascendency  of,  298, 
302 

Blame,  nature  of,  289 

Blowitz,  M.  de,  298 


Body,  relation  of,  to  the  self, 144  f, 

163 

Booth,  Charles,  276 
Brotherhood,  extension  of  the  sense 

of,  114  f 

Brown,  John,  377 
Browning,  316 

Bryant,  Sophie,  on  antipathy,  335 
Bryce,  Prof.  James,  38,  309 
Burke,  Edmund,  202,  302  f 
Burroughs,  John,  on  the  physiog- 
nomy of  works  of  genius,  74 

CJBSAK,  as  a  personal  idea,  99 

Cant,  320 

Casaubon,  Mr.,  224 f 

Chagrin,  241 

Charity,  238,  336.  See  also  Altru- 
ism. Right 

Chicago,  aspect  of  the  crowd  in,  37 

Child,  Theodore,  355 

Child,  a,  unlovable  at  birth,  45 

Children,  imitation  in,  19  ff;  socia- 
bility of,  45  ff;  imaginary  con- 
versation of,  52  ff ;  study  of 
expression  by,  62  ff;  growth  of 
sentiment  in,  79  ff;  development 
of  self  in,  142,  146 ;  use  of  "  I " 
by,  157ff ;  reflected  self  in,  164  ff; 
anger  of,  232  f  ;  hero-worship  of, 
279  ;  ascendency  over,  289  f  ;  ha- 
bitual morality  in,  340 f;  moral 
growth  of,  349  ff;  causes  of  de- 
generacy in,  378  ff;  what  consti- 
tutes freedom  for,  393  f,  398, 401 ; 
spoiled,  403 


405 


INDEX 


China,  organization  of,  399 

Chinese,  European  lack  of  moral 
sense  regarding,  362 

Choice,  in  relation  to  suggestion, 
11  11 ;  as  an  organization  of  so- 
cial relations,  16  f ;  practical  lim- 
itations of,  31  ff ;  is  exhausting, 
33f 

Christ,  self -feeling  of,  142 ;  indig- 
nation felt  by,  247;  as  leader, 
323 ;  as  moral  authority,  353 

' '  Christian's  Secret  of  a  Happy 
Life,"  34 

Church,  inculcation  of  personal 
authority  in  the,  353 ;  freedom 
in  the,  398,  403 

City  life,  effect  upon  sympathy, 
112f 

Classification  of  minds  as  stable  or 
unstable,  186  f,  200  ff,  382  f 

Collectivism,  4 

Columbus,  269,  306 

Communicate,  the  impulse  to,  56  ff 

Communication,  of  sentiment,104f ; 
effect  of  modern,  114 ;  influence 
of  means  of,  361, 365, 399 

Communion,as  an  aspect  of  society, 
102-135 

Competition,  252,  256  f 

Confession,  54,  356  f 

Conformity,  262  ff 

Conscience,  12,  180,  202,  239,  249, 
258;  social  aspect  of,  326-371; 
voice  of,  328  ;  individual  and  so- 
cial aspects  of,  346  f ;  in  de- 
generacy, 383  ff;  is  the  test  of 
freedom,  etc.,  396.  See  also 
Right 

Conservatism,  273 

"  Continued  Stories,"  366  f 

Controversy,  243 

Conversation,  imaginary,  52  ff,  359, 
361 

Country  life,  effect  upon  sympathy; 
112 


Creeds,  the  nature  and  use  of,  370 

Crime,  252;  as  degeneracy,  379, 
385  ff;  and  insanity,  387  ff 

Criminal  impulses,  nature  of,  380  f 

Cromwell,  302 

Crowds,  suggestibility  of,  40 

Crowd-feeling,  291  f 

Culture,relation  of  ,to  social  organi- 
zation, 117  f 

DAGNAN,  355 

Dante,  31  f,  188 

Darwin,  'Charles,  66,  68,  165,  177, 
190,  243,  279 ;  power  as  a  writer, 
304 ;  323,  374 

"Das  ewig  Weibliche,"  171,  312 

Degeneracy,  from  too  much  choice, 
39,  125;  self -feeling  in,  229  ff; 
personal,  372-391 ;  incidental  to 
freedom,  403  f 

Delusions  of  greatness  and  of  perse- 
cution, 229  f 

Democracy  of  sentiment,  114 

Descartes,  seclusion  of,  197 

Determinism,  4 

Dialogue,  composing  in,  55  f 

Diaries,  as  intercourse,  57 ;  moral 
effect  of,  356  f 

Dill's  "  Roman  Society,"  312 

Discipline,  in  relation  to  freedom, 
396  f 

Disraeli,  B.,  219,  315 

Divorce,  increase  of,  incidental  to 
freedom,  403 

Double  causation  theory  of  society, 
9f 

Dreams,  as  imaginary  conversa- 
tion, 54 

Duplicity,  234 

Duty,  sense  of,  338  f ,  343, 360 

EDUCATION,  culture  in,  117  f ;  as 
freedom,  398, 401.  See  also  Chil- 
dren 

Ego,  the  empirical,  136 ;  the  meta- 


406 


INDEX 


physical,  13(5,  163 ;  and  alter  in 
morals,  343  ff 

Egoism,4 ;  and  altruism,  93  ff,188ff, 
344  ff 

Egotism,  92,  179 ff;  as  a  mental 
trait,  186  ff;  varieties  of,  186  ff; 
as  degeneracy,  382  f 

Element  of  society,  134 

Eliot,  George,  178,  224,  263,  314, 
354 

Eloquence,  301  ff 

Emerson,  E.  W.,367 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  6,  57,  120,  138, 
174,  211,  243,  266,  269,  287,  294, 
295,  335,  365,  367 

Emulation,  262-282 

Endogenous  minds,  200  f ,  383 

Environment,  271  ;  and  heredity, 
378  f .  See  also  Suggestion 

Equilibrium  mobile  of  conscience, 
335 

Ethics,  physiological  theories  of, 
208  f .  See  also  Conscience,  Right 

Evolution,  9, 13,  18,  145 ;  in  rela- 
tion to  leadership,  322;  to  de- 
generacy, 373  ff 

Exhaustion,  causes  suggestibility, 
41 

Exogenous  minds,  200  f,  382 

Experience,  social,  is  imaginative, 
105  f 

Expression,  facial,  62  ff ;  vocal,  66  f ; 
interpretation  of,  68 f;  sugges- 
tion of,  in  literature  and  art,  71  ff 

Eye,  expressiveness  of,  62  f ;  in 
literature,  73 

PACE.     See  Expression 

Fame,  often  transcends  the  man, 

307  f 

Family,  freedom  in  the,  403 
Fear,  of  animals,  66 ;  social,  258  ff 
Feeling.     See  Sentiment 
Fitzgerald,  Edward,   seclusiveness 

of,  400 


Forms,  used  to  maintain  ascen- 
dency, 319 

Fox,  Charles,  302  f 

Fra  Angelico,  248,  353 

Francis,  St. ,  47 

Free-will,  4, 18  ff,  32 

Freedom,  392-404;  definition  of, 
393,  395 

Friendship,  120  f 

Frith1  s  "  Autobiography,"  76 

GAMES,  athletic,  256 

Genius,  11, 106,  169, 188  ;  disorders 
of  self  incident  to,  228 f;  237, 
266,  321  ff.  See  also  Leadership 

Gibbon,  Edward,  273 

Gibson,  W.  H.,  306 

Giddings,  Prof.  F.  H.,  on  imita- 
tion, 27 

Gloating,  143 

God,  as  love,  126 f;  appropriated, 
155;  as  ideal  self,  214;  idea  of, 
281  f ,  370  f .  See  also  Religion 

Gods,  famous  persons  partake  of 
the  nature  of,  308 

Goethe,  on  individuality  in  art,  33 ; 
on  the  composition  of  "  Wer- 
ther,"  55;  personality  in  his  style 
75 ;  121,  122,  132,  150, 194,  196, 
204,  211,  241,  254,  266,  279,  312, 
316,  392 

Gothic  architecture,  rise  of,  37 

Grant,  General,  41,  76;  ascen' 
dency  of,  299  f ,  315 

Gummere,  F.  B.,210 

Guyau,  on  the  onward  self,  335  f 

HABIT,  limits  suggestibility,  42? 
in  relation  to  the  self,  155 ;  to 
the  sense  of  right,  337  ff,  348 

Hall,  President  G.  Stanley,  73  ;  on 
the  self,  163  ;  259 

Hamerton,  P.  G.,  196,  317 

Hamlet,  use  of  "I"  in,  145 

Hatred,  253 


407 


INDEX 


Hazlitt,W.,253 

Hedonizing,  instinctive,  61 

Herbert,  George,  155 

Hereditary  element  in  sociability, 
50 

Hereditary  tendency,  284  ff 

Heredity,  as  a  cause  of  degener- 
acy, 375,  378  ff 

Hero-worship,  213,  278ff,286f, 

Heroism,  339 

Honor,  207  ff 

Hope,  ascendency  of,  310  f 

Hostility,  232-261 

Howells,  W.  D.,  301 

Hugo,  Victor,  229 

Humility,  212  ff 

Huxley,  Thomas,  242  f,  305 

Hysterical  temperament,  344,  382  f 

"  I,"  in  relation  to  love,  129  ff;  the 
reflected  or  looking-glass,  153  f, 
164  ff,  175,  178,  211,  216  f,  349  ff; 
meaning  of,  136-178  ;  existswith- 
in  the  general  life,  147  ff;  as  re- 
lated to  the  rest  of  thought,  150  f , 
156 ;  is  rooted  in  the  social  order, 
153  ff;  how  children  learn  the 
meaning  of,  157  ff;  various  phases 
of,  179-231 ;  use  of  in  literature 
and  conversation,  190  ff;  in  self- 
reverence,  211 ;  in  leadership, 
294 

Ideal  persons,  as  factors  in  con- 
science, 362  ff;  of  religion,  280 ff, 
368  ff 

Idealism,  ascendency  of,  310 

Idealization,  272,  362  ff 

Ideas,  personal.  See  Personal 
ideas 

Idiocy,  congenital,  379  ;  as  mental 
degeneracy,  381 f 

Idiots,  kindliness  of,  51  f,  125 

Imaginary  conversation,  of  chil- 
dren, 52  f ;  all  thought  is,  53  ff 

Imaginary  playmate,  52  f 


Imagination,  in  relation  to  personal 
ideas,  81  ff,  98  ff;  the  locus  of 
society,  100;  social,  a  requisite 
to  power,  107 ;  narrowness  of,  in 
egotism,  183 ;  essential  to  good- 
ness, 359 

Imitation,  14  ff ;  in  children,  19  ff; 
not  mechanical,  23  ff ;  by  parents, 
25  ;  in  relation  to  smiling,  47  f  ; 
64,  71,  262,  266,  271 ;  the  doctrine 
of  objectionable,  272 ;  310,  337 

Imitative  instinct,  the  supposed, 
25ff 

Immortality,  self -feeling  in  the  idea 
of,  155 

Imposture,  318  ff 

Indifferentism,  389 

Indignation,  239,  249  ff 

Individual,  the,  in  relation  to  so- 
ciety, 1-13,  324  f,  393  ;  as  a  cause, 
321  ff ;  and  social,  in  morals,  342  ff 

Individualism,  4  ff,  8, 10 

Individuality,  Goethe's  view  of,  in 
art,  33 

Industrial  system,  effect  of  upon 
the  individual,  118  f 

Insane,  reverence  for  the,  314 

Insanity,  in  relation  to  sympathy, 
110 ;  the  self  in,  229  f ;  and  crime, 
387  ff 

Instincts,  whether  divisible  into 
social  and  unsocial,  12  f 

Institution,  ideal  persons  may  be- 
come an,  369 

Institutions,  in  relation  to  sym- 
pathy, 133 

Intercourse,  relation  to  thought, 
61 

Interlocutor,  imaginary,  drawn 
from  the  environment,  59  f 

Invention,  271  f,  337.  See  also 
Imitation 

Involuntary,  the,  why  ignored,  30  f . 
See  also  Will 

Isolation  of  degenerates,  391 


408 


IKDEX 


JAMES,  HENRY,  183,  236,  314 
James,  Prof.    William,    on    social 

persons,   90 ;   on  the  self,    138 ; 

143,  27(5,  288,  359 
Jerome,  St.,  154 
Jowett,  Prof. ,  279 
Justice,  the  sentiment  of,  91 ;  based 

on  sympathy,  108 ;    relation    to 

love,  127  ;  236,  352,  366 

KEMPIS,  THOMAS  A,  34,  128,  155, 
214,  218,  220,  226 

LAMB,  CHARLES,  76, 192 ;  literary 
power  of,  306 

Language  involves  an  interlocutor, 
56.  See  also  Expression 

Leader,  mental  traits  of  a,  293  ff; 
does  he  really  lead  ?  321 

Leadership,  108,  175,  283-325 

Learoyd,  Mabel  W.,  366 

Lecky,  W.  H.,  223 

Leonardo,  mystery  of,  316 

Likeness  and  difference  in  sympa- 
thy, 120  f 

Lincoln,  83 

Literature,  creative  impulse  in,  57 ; 
personal  symbols  in,  73  ff ;  self - 
feeling  in,  194 ;  ascendency  in, 
303  ff ;  mystery  in,  315 

Lombroso,  Prof.  Cesare,  229 

Love,  of  the  sexes,  121  f ;  and 
sympathy,  124  ff;  scope  of,  126 f ; 
nature  of,  127  ff ;  Thomas  a  Kern- 
pis  and  Emerson  on,  128 ;  two 
kinds  of,  129 ff;  and  self,  129 ff; 
155  ff,  195 ;  as  a  social  ideal, 
247 f;  of  enemies,  251;  309,  312 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  141  f,  265,  269, 402 

Luther,  Martin,  180  f,  318 

Lying,  in  relation  to  sympathy, 
110,  358  f 


M.,  a  child  of  the  author,  24,  27, 
49,62ff,  157ff,166f,349ff 


Macaulay, physiognomy  in  his  style, 
77 

Machinery,  effect  of, upon  the  work- 
man, 118  f 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  264 

Man  of  the  world,  traits  of  the  con- 
temporary, 255 

Manners,  conformity  in,  263  ;  as  an 
aid  to  ascendency,  319 

Marshall,  H.R,  331 

Material  bent  of  our  civilization, 
37,  402 

Maudsley,  Dr.,  on  degeneracy,  381 

Meredith,  George,  182 

Michelangelo,  76, 310,  353 

Middle  Ages,  suggestibility  in  the, 
36 

Milieu,  power  of  the,  34  ff 

Milton,  73 

Moltke,  silence  of,  315 

Monasti  cism,  in  relation  to  the  self, 
222  f,  227  f 

Montaigne,  on  the  need  to  com- 
municate, 56 ;  76,  191, 192 

Moore,  K.  C.,  on  the  smiling  of 
infants,  46 

Morality,  traditionary,  338  ff.  See 
also  Conscience,  Right 

Motley,  J.  L.,73f 

Murder,  386 

Music,  sensuous  mystery  of,  317 

Mystery,  a  factor  in  ascendency, 
312  ff 

NANSEN,  269 

Napoleon,  how  we  know  him,  86 ; 
ascendency  of,  296 ;  place  in  his- 
tory, 324 

New  Testament,  142,  215,  245 

Nirvana,  the  ideal  of  disinterested 
love,  130 

Non-conformity,  262  ff 

Non-resistance,  doctrine  of,  245  ff 

Norsemen,  motive  of,  273 

Norton,  Prof.  C.  E.,  37 


409 


INDEX 


"  ONE,"  use  of ,  compared  with  "I," 

192  f 

Onward,  right  as  the,  334  ff 
Opposition,   personal,  its    nature, 

95  f;  spirit  of,  367  ff 
Oratory,  ascendency  in,  301  ff 
Organization,  of  personal  thought, 

51 ;  effect  of  upon  the  individual, 

115  ff ;  or  vital  process,  problem 

of,  333 
Originality,  322  ff.  See  also  Genius, 

Leadership,  Invention 
Other-worldism,  222 

PAINTING,  personal  symbols  in,  72. 
See  also  Art,  Expression 

Papacy,  symbolic  character  of,  308  f 

Particularism,  4 

Pascal,  218,  222 

Passion,  why  a  cause  of  pain,  253  f ; 
influence  upon  idea  of  right,  330  f 

Pater,  Walter,  304 

Patten,  Prof.  Simon  N.,  244 

Paul,  St.,  218 

Perez,  Dr.  B.,  46 ;  on  the  eye,  62  f.; 
232,350 

Personal  authority,  influence  upon 
sense  of  right,  353  ff 

Personal  character,  interpretation 
of,  67,  70 

Personal  ideas,  62  ff ;  sensuous  nu- 
cleus of,  69  ff;  sentiment  their 
chief  content,  81  ff,  104 ;  com- 
pared to  a  system  of  lights,  97  f  ; 
affect  the  physical  organism,99  f ; 
affect  the  sense  of  right,  348  ff 

Personal  symbols  in  art  and  litera- 
ture, 71  ff 

Persons,  real  and  imaginary,  in- 
separable, 60 f;  incorporeal,  t.heir 
social  reality,  88 ;  social,  inter- 
penetrate one  another,  90  ff ; 
ideal,  as  factors  in  conscience, 
362  ff;  ideal,  of  religion,  280  ff, 
368ff 


Philanthropy,  motive  of,  269  f 

Pioneer,  self -feeling  of  the,  268 

Pity,  is  it  altruism  ?  94  f ;  relation 
to  sympathy,  102  f;  238 

Power,  based  on  sympathy,  107  f  ; 
idea  of,  290  ;  advantage  of  visible 
forms  of,  291  f.  See  also  Ascen- 
dency 

Prayer,  as  personal  intercourse,  357 

Pretence,  contempt  of,  in  America, 
300 

Prevention  of  degeneracy,  390  f 

Preyer,  W.,  27, 46 

Pride,  199  ff 

Primitive  individualism,  10 

Principle,  moral,  338  f 

Process,  social,  imitation,  etc.,  as, 
272 ;  vital,  problem  of,  333 

Processes,  social,  reflected  in  sym- 
pathy, 119  ff 

Progress,  relation  of,  to  freedom, 
396 

Publicity,  moral  effect  of,  356  ff 

Punishment,  252,  384,  390 

B.,  a  child  of  the  author,  21  ff,  28, 

49  f,  51,  53, 158  ff,  341,  351 
Rational,  right  as  the,  326  ff 
Recapitulation  theory  of  mental 

development,  21 
Refinement,  as  affecting  hostility, 

237 

Religion,  suggestibility  in,  42, 43 ; 
self-feeling  of  founders  of,  181 ; 
self -discipline  in,  214f,219ff;  as 
hero-worship,  280  ff;  mediaeval, 
309  ;  mystery  hi,  317 ;  ideal  per- 
sons of,  368  ff 

Remorse,  253,  329,  368,  385  f 
Repentance,  368 
Resentment,  199,  212,  237  ff 
Resistance,  imaginative,  245  ff 
Responsibility,  in  crime,  etc.,  388  t 
Right,  baaed  on  sympathy,  108  ff; 
relation  to  egotism,  184 ;  to  the 


410 


INDEX 


self  in  general,  189 ;  social  stand- 
ards of,  as  affecting  hostility, 
356  ff;  as  the  rational,  326  ff; 
conscience  the  final  test  of,  333  f ; 
as  the  onward,  334  ff;  as  habit, 
337  ff,  348 ;  as  a  phase  of  the  self, 
342  f ;  the  social  as  opposed  to 
the  sensual,  347  f ;  action  of  per- 
sonal ideas  in  forming  the  sense 
of,  348  ff;  as  a  microcosm  of 
character,  353;  reflects  a  social 
group,  360  ff;  and  wrong,  372  ff; 
idea  of,  377 ;  freedom  as,  393  ff 

Riis,  Jacob  A.,  361 

Rivalry,  274  ff 

Roget's  "  Thesaurus,"  198 

Roman  Empire,  312,  399 

Rousseau,  237,  260 

Rule  of  conduct,  Marshall's,  331 

Ruskin,  317 

Russia,  399 

SAKITY,  based  on  sympathy,  110 
Savonarola,  physiognomy  of,  314 
Schiller,  113, 121 

Science,  and  faith,  308;  cant  of, 
320 ;  moral,  limits  of,  334 ;  physi- 
cal, 402 

Sculpture,  personal  symbols  in,  72  f 
Seclusion,  moral  effect  of,  358 
Secretiveness,  59, 196 
''  Seeing  yourself,"  367  f 
Selection,  in  sympathy,  122  ff 
Selective  method  of  nature,  373  f 
Self,  in  relation  to  other  personal 
ideas,   91  ff,  98  ;  antithesis  with 
"other,"  115,  188 ff;  in  morals, 
365 f;  in  relation  to  love,  129ff, 
155  ff,  195  ;  social,   136-231 ;  ob- 
servation of  in  children,  157  ff; 
the  narrow  or  egotistical,   185 ; 
every  cherished  idea  is  a,  185 ; 
reflected  or  looking-glass,  152  f, 
164  ff,  175,  178,  211,  216  f  ;  influ- 
ence of  upon  conscience,  349  ff ; 


maladies  of  the  social,  215  ff; 
transformation  of, 224  ff;  effect  of 
uncongenial  environment  upon, 
227  ff;  245,320;  crescive,  335 ; 
ethical,  342 f;  ideal  social,  359, 
366  ff 

Self-control,  254 

Self- feeling,  137  ff;  quotations  illus- 
trating, 141  f  ;  of  reformers,  etc. , 
181;  intense,  essential  to  produc- 
tion, 193  ff;  control  of,  217  ff;  in 
mental  disorder,  etc. ,  239  f ;  in 
non-conformity,  267 

Self-image  as  a  work  of  art,  207 

Self -neglecting,  195 

Self-reliance,  294  ff 

Self-respect,  205  ff,  238 

Self -reverence,  211  ff 

Self-sacrifice,  190,  836.  See  also 
Humility,  Altruism 

Selfishness,  nature  of,  179  ff ;  as  a 
mental  trait,  186  ff 

"  Sense  of  other  persons,"  176 

Sensual,  as  opposed  to  the  social, 
347  f 

Sensuality,  182 

Sentiment,  personal,  genesis  of, 
79  ff ;  is  differentiated  emotion, 
80 ;  in  personal  ideas,  81  ff ;  rela- 
tion to  persons,  83  ;  more  com- 
municable than  sensation,  104  f ; 
moral,  327  ff;  389 

Sentiments,  as  related  to  selfish- 
ness, 182 ;  literary,  361 

Seven  deadly  sins,  381 

Sex,  in  sympathy,  121  f ;  in  the 
self,  171  ff 

Shakespeare,  11,  73,  76;  on  the 
genesis  of  sentiment,  80 f;  103, 
106,  141,  145, 148,  188,  195,  210, 
255,  282 

Shame,  fear  of,  260  f ;  sense  of, 
350 

"  Sheridan's  Ride,"  292 

Sherman,  General,  299 


411 


INDEX 


Shinn,  Miss,  167 

Sidis,  Dr.  R,  36 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip.  83 

Silence,  fascination  of,  314  f 

Simplicity,  174 

Sin,  376,  381 

Sincerity  in  leadership,  317  ff 

Slums,  379 

Smiles,  earliest,  45  ff ;  interpreta- 
tionof,  64  f 

Sociability  and  personal  ideas,  45- 
101 

"  Social,"  meanings  of  the  word, 
3f 

Social  faculty  view,  11  f 

Social  groups,  sensible  basis  of  the 
idea  of,  77;  relation  of  to  the 
individual,  114 

Social  order,  reflected  in  sympathy, 
111  ff ;  freedom  in  relation  to, 
397  ff 

Social  reality,  the  immediate  is  the 
personal  idea,  84 

Socialism,  4  ff,  90 

Society,  and  the  individual,  1-13, 
134  f ,  324  f ;  in  morals,  342  ff,  393: 
is  primarily  a  mental  fact,  84 ;  is 
a  relation  among  personal  ideas, 
84 ;  each  mind  an  aspect  of,  84  f ; 
the  idea  of,  85 ;  must  be  stud- 
ied in  the  imagination,  86  ff;  is 
the  collective  aspect  of  personal 
thought,  100  ;  a  phase,  not  a  sep- 
arable thing,  101 

Sociology,  too  much  based  on  ma- 
terial notions,  85,  89  f,  98  ff; 
must  observe  personal  ideas,  87  ff ; 
deals  with  personal  intercourse 
in  primary  and  secondary  as- 
pects, 101 

Solitude,  apparent,  57  f 

Sophocles,  142 

Spanish-American  war,  consoli- 
dating effect  of,  293 

Specialization,  effect  of,  115  ff 


Spencer,  Herbert,  on  egoism  and 
altruism,  92 ;  nature  of  his  sys- 
tem, 92 ;  on  progress,  399 

Spencerism,  306 

Stability  and  instability  in  the  self, 
200  ff 

Stable  and  unstable  types  of  mind, 
186  ff,  200ff,382f 

Stanley,  Prof.  H.  M.,  27,  138,  201, 
214 

Sterne,  L.,  194 

Stevenson,  R.  L. ,  physiognomy  in 
his  style,  77 ;  88,  95, 192,  195,  260, 
320,355 

Strain  of  the  present  age,  112 

Struggle  for  existence,  as  a  view  of 
life,  272 

Style,  the  personal  idea  in,  73  ff ; 
what  it  is,  74 ;  personal  ascen- 
dency in,  303  ff 

Suger,  the  Abbot,  37 

Suggestibility,  39  ff 

Suggestion,  and  choice,  14—44 ; 
definition  of,  14 ;  in  children, 
19  ff;  contrary,  23,  267;  scope 
of  in  life,  29  ff 

Superficiality  of  the  time,  112,  198 

Symbols,  personal,  69  ff ;  in  art  and 
literature,  71  ff 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  155,  169 f,  279, 
317 

Sympathy,  or  communion  as  an  as- 
pect of  society,  102-135  ;  mean- 
ing of,  102  ff;  as  compassion, 
'  103 ;  a  measure  of  personality, 
106 ff;  universal,  113 f;  reflects 
social  processes,  119  ff;  selective, 
122  ff ;  and  love,  124  ff ;  a  particu- 
lar expression  of  society,  133  ff; 
hostile,  160,  234  ff ;  in  leadership, 
294  ff ;  lack  of,  in  degeneracy,  382; 
with  criminal  acts  a  test  of  re- 
sponsibility, 387  ff 

Sympathies,  reflect  the  social  or- 
der, 111  ff 


412 


INDEX 


TACT,  183  f ;  in  ascendency,  297  f 

Tarde,  G.,  15,  272 

"  Tasso,"  quoted,  122, 150 

Tennyson,  129,  210, 287,  318 

Thackeray,  76,  192 

Thoreau,    H.    D.,   his    relation   to 

society,  57  f,  399  f;  157, 192,  195, 

197,  235,  244,  270 
Toleration,  264 

Truth,  motive  for  telling,  358  f 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  42,  314 

VANITY,  199,  203  ff 
Variation,  degeneracy  as,  374  f 

YOUTH,  sense  of,  128,  280 

WAGNER,  RICHARD,  76 

War,  hostile  feeling  in,   257;  dra- 


matic power  of  leadership  in, 
291  f 

Washington,  83 

Whitman,  Walt,  192 

Will,  free,  4 ;  individual  and  social, 
17 ;  popular  view  of,  18 ;  is  it 
externally  determined  ?  18  f ,  32  f ; 
activity  of,  reflects  society,  38  f 

William  the  Silent,  314 

Withdrawal,  physical,  219  ;  imagi- 
native, 220  ff 

Wrong,  as  the  irrational,  329 ; 
emphasized  by  example,  356; 
degeneracy  as,  372  ff;  idea  of, 
377 ;  not  always  opposed  by 
conscience,  385  f ;  the  unfree, 
396 

Wundt.  on  "  Ich,"  138 


413 


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